Plight
by Thethuthinnang
Summary: BtVS.LotR. He saw her on the street of soap and candlemakers. 8th in The Girl.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

He saw her on the street of soap- and candle-makers.

She passed by quickly in the crowd, no more than a small, pale face, a white, clean head cloth, and a narrow waist wrapped in coarse, peasant wool. The bundles of laundry she carried on top of her head and at the hip hid the rest of her, and she disappeared again as quickly and quietly as she had appeared.

He stood his horse still, looking long after her, blocking the street and stretching his neck in a raffish manner before Mablung coughed to remind him of his person and place.

But, as he rode away, he could not help looking back.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

At the hour before dark the next day, he returned to where the street of soap- and candle-makers met the street of laundresses.

He had clothed himself plainly, baffling his servants by wanting peasant cloth. They had refused to bring this to him, and he had had to accept good linen of plain cut in place of it. He wore a guardsman's helm and strapped a borrowed sword to his belt.

No one stopped him as he walked through the gate and down the Tunnel-Way. The people he passed did not look at him for longer than it took to see the quality of his clothes and the blade at his hip and decide him a guard off-duty or some soldier looking for work, both professions much more common sights in recent days. The breadth off his shoulders and the hard line of his jaw prevented anything more than a polite nod.

When he arrived, the street of laundresses was becoming empty, the doors shutting against the dark, and he feared he was too late. But then he saw her, coming through a brightly-lit door with the signs of soap-maker, candle-maker, and laundress fixed over it, covered in a light cloak.

He stayed at his corner, at a loss for what to do. He had thought to approach her, to speak to her, but it had occurred to him that such a thing was hardly appropriate, and his appearance would probably frighten her. In his haste to return to the place where he had seen her, in his hurry to learn her name, he had not thought of the proper way to do things, and so he found himself skulking in the darkened space between lighted lamps, unable to go forward or backward.

She had come halfway to where he stood when she stopped, her head coming up, and he realized she had seen him.

They stood, he breathless and she very still, and the light of the lamp closer to her shone in her face.

He felt an odd pain in his chest. Straightening his already straight back, he gave her a courtly bow.

She was looking very boldly at him when he rose from it, and he realized she was not afraid. Only cautiously she kept her distance, poised in a certain, silent wariness, and the image came to him of a hart in the wood, listening for the howl of dogs.

"My lady," he said then, and was caught unaware by the uncertainty in his own voice. "My lady, I shall see you safe home."

He waited, but she did not speak, only stood looking at him. Despite that, her expression was not unwelcoming, and after a moment she gave him a slow nod.

They walked quietly through the dark, going from the busy streets of tradespeople to the emptier, less well-lit alleys. She walked with a good length to her stride, which was immodest, but her tread revealed more grace than he had ever seen in the step of a courtly lady. He thought that her eyes were sharper than he had thought, for she was sure and quick in her movements, leading the way.

He saw pieces of her as they went. This passing lamp traced the line of her throat, that cast the darker shape of her impossible waist through the lighter shadow of her dress. Her hands, when he glimpsed them, were small and fine. Walking at his side, she was unusually small, the top of her head barely coming to his shoulder.

He yearned, unexpectedly, shockingly, to see her free and unbound hair.

When she stopped, it was before a small house against the outer wall, far from the street of laundresses. She looked at him then, as if expecting him to do or say something, and he was embarrassed to realize that he did not want to let her go.

"I," he began, and then rushed on without thought, "I am - Damrod."

He stopped, nearly humiliated, but she only nodded and turned to go.

Before he could recover himself, before he could even think of what he was doing, he had reached out and caught her hand.

They stood, she on the stoop and he in the street, her hand in his between them.

"Please," he whispered "Your name?"

She turned away and his stomach dropped, but then she looked back and smiled at him, and again he felt that odd pain.

"Anne," she said, and, slipping her hand from his, went up the steps, through the door, and was gone.

He stood for a while, watching until he saw the light in one of the windows in the roof. And then he turned to go, hoping that she was looking after him, but unable to turn and see, in case she wasn't.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

For two days, he did not see her. Absurdly, he missed her, as if he knew more of her than her face and name, and that she was a laundress.

He could not stop thinking of her. He had never heard her name before. It lay honeyed on his tongue all the long hours, and he found himself wanting for some excuse to say it out loud. He could not pay attention to anything, and several times had to be rebuked and reminded by Mablung. No one, however, was unkind, and he saw the smiles they tried to hide from him, heard the servants whispering what the men were saying into their sleeves, and their fondness and loyalty were like a hand on his shoulder.

And he knew that no one would say anything to their lord.

He asked, while out as the off-duty guard, after the place on the street of laundresses, and was told it was the house of a widow, whose husband had died and left her nothing, who now fed her three sons by taking in washing and selling womanly goods. She had recently taken in another child, it was said, a girl who didn't speak but worked tirelessly, good habits in an orphan.

The place against the outer wall, he learned, was the home of an old woman who ran a small but clean rooming house, and she, too, it seemed, had recently taken on a girl to clean and keep for her, who was said to have hands too fine for the work but not a single complaint.

Yet no one could tell him where she had come from, and could hardly remember more of her than what they had heard in relation to their neighbors.

"Small," most people said. "No more than a child. Quiet."

"Foreign," a few whispered. "Doesn't talk."

And, from a boy he had seen come down the steps of the wash house with a coin in his fist and his face turned toward the market, the blurted words, "She's the prettiest girl in the city." The boy, perhaps thirteen, had flushed, looking up at him challengingly, a little suspiciously. "But she ain't a bawd, so look elsewhere!"

She passed him in the crowd with bundles of clean wash on her head and at her hip, and he saw how she kept her head lowered so that her white cap kept the sun off of her face as well as it hid her from watching eyes, how she moved, how she walked, and he saw how she might avoid attention, her every turn and look suggesting a modest plainness as uninteresting as the laundry she carried. There was nothing of her dauntless look then, nothing of what he remembered by the light of lamps and the moon, when his heart had been harrowed in his breast.

Three days after he had gotten from her her name, he returned to the street of laundresses. Dark had fallen by the time he reached the lamp, a cold wind blowing from the north, but she was still there, standing on the stoop in front of the widow's house.

A man stood in the street before her.

He slowed, stopped, by habit stepped out of the light and into the darker space between.

The man wore black leather, and on his head was a winged helmet. At his belt hung a sword, and on his back a bow. A guard of the White Citadel, he recognized, and his heart sank.

But this was of his doing, and he would not let her suffer for it. Squaring his shoulders, he went forward.

The guard turned when he was less than halfway to them, and his face was stern. When he saw who approached, however, the sternness fled.

They stood, her between, looking at each other.

When the guard spoke, his face was pale and his voice was uncertain. "Forgive me. I seem to have been mistaken." His eyes went to the girl, and a resignation filled his expression. "Good night."

The guard turned and went by him without anything more.

They stood a while, he in growing dismay and she only looking at him, a small, puzzled frown in her brow.

"I did not know," he said awkwardly. She said nothing. "I would not have approached you if I had known -"

She looked in the direction the guard had gone, and he saw her confusion, how she did not quite grasp what had just occurred. But then she looked at him, and the frown faded.

Hesitant, biting her lip, she shyly, without meeting his eyes, said to him, "Damrod?"

The name formed attractively on her lips, but with an articulation he had never heard before and did not recognize. She had said it awkwardly, and he realized that she did not really speak Westron.

He remembered how he had been told, in answer to his offhand questions, that she was foreign.

"Damrod," she said shyly, and he saw in the way she looked at him and the way she brushed her fingers over her cheek as if her hair hung loose instead of wrapped how glad she was to see him again.

"Anne," he replied quietly, and walked her home, watching all the while how she seemed to walk closer to him than before.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

He saw the Guard of the Citadel again several times, on patrol and when the shifts changed, but the man neither approached nor spoke to him. He waited to see what would come from it, but the guard said nothing and nothing happened, and so he put it out of his mind.

He began going to see her home every night. Often it was in complete silence, with nothing more than a look here and there. They greeted each other by their names, and for a while that was all he said to her, and she to him.

And then, on a night when the bite of winter was not as hard as it had been the night before, she stopped still several streets away from the rooming house and pointed at the street.

He could not see anything there, but when she pointed again and insistently, he asked her, "What is wrong?"

"Wrong," she repeated, and looked down at the street.

Then it became clear, and he smiled. "No," he told her, and pointed. "Street."

"Street," she said after him, and pointed at a lamp.

"Lamp," he told her, and pointed at the cloak she wore. "Cloak."

As they walked, he named things to her, things like _knife_ and _door _and _boot _and _soap _and _star_. She drank the words he gave her like water, and repeated them back with a quick tongue. Once, she pointed up to the top of the city and said to him, "The White Tower."

It was the first time she had ever spoken to him first without repeating something he had said, and he found that she had a terrible accent. It made him grin, which he did not do often. "The White Tower," he told her. "The Tower of Ecthelion, which King Calimehtar first built when we were still Minas Arnor."

She stared at him for a long moment, and then said, with some finality, "Tower."

He laughed.

When they reached her door, she turned to him again and stood watching him. The white head cloth seemed to hide more of her than ever, and he longed suddenly and deeply to know the color of her eyes.

She spoke to him, and it was in a language he had never heard before, a harsh and ungraceful tongue that was too strange to hear coming from her lips. Still, he listened, picked out a short and simple word, and repeated it to her.

Her eyes went wide and a blush that he could see even in the dark flushed her skin. Alarmed, he told her "Forgive me, I meant nothing," wondering what he could possibly have said or misused.

She put a hand to her mouth, and then went up into the house without saying anything else to him.

He stood for a while, looking for the light in the window that did not come.

He turned and left. Looking back a last time, he thought he saw a pale figure standing in the window of the roof, a small girl with her hair loose.

When he came back the next day, he brought parchment, ink, and a quill, and showed her the letters of their names.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

He stood waiting for nearly an hour.

The lamplighters had come and gone, going out of their way to avoid the helmed and cloaked man standing beneath the lamp on the street of laundresses. The only one to have approached him had been a small boy in cap and coat, an apprenticing lamplighter, who had trimmed, cut, applied, and lit as quickly as he could before hurrying on.

When it became clear that she was not coming, he thought to leave. Yet he had been waiting all the day to see her again, to tell her "Good night, Anne" and hear "Good night, Damrod" in return, and found that he could not quite give up on it. It had also occurred to him that she could have gone early, but he did not think she would forget him that easily.

The light was still bright in the widow's house, though the upper floor was still dark. He decided to knock, to see if she was still there, and, if she wasn't, to go to her home against the wall and make sure she was there.

The rap of his gloved knuckles against the door was louder than should have been possible, and he felt as if he were an Easterling hammering on the door of a farmhouse. From inside, he heard movement, a splash of water, dripping, and then felt someone lean against the door, listening.

"Anne?" he said awkwardly, and the door opened.

The first thing that came into his mind was that she looked tired. The cloth that bound her hair was damp with steam, and the hem of her dress wet through. In the light of candles, her skin was white and bloodless but for the red stains in her cheeks.

"Damrod," she said, and his name was a sigh.

He hesitated. He had not seen her really look like a laundress before.

"I..." He shifted uncomfortably. "I worried."

The smile she gave him broke the strained moment, and she stepped aside to let him in. He removed his helm as she closed the door, setting it and his sword, bow, and quiver on a near table.

That floor was obviously the place where the work was done, and he saw huge tubs full of water, tables stacked with soaps, bottles, and a hundred other things he did not know the uses of. He knew the names and ranks of all the officers of the army of Gondor and every man in the Rangers of Ithilien, could have spoken a list of all the nobles and lineages of the lords of Westernesse, and knew each and every part of a suit of armor and harness, but he could not have said what the wood-handled brush hanging on the far wall was for.

When he turned to her again, Anne offered him a cup. He took it, found it to be hot cider worthier than anything he had ever got from the kitchens of the Citadel, and belatedly wished he had brought supper with him. He would, he told himself, tomorrow.

While he drank, Anne returned to a smaller tub that was still steaming, catching his eye with an apologetic look.

"I...sorry," she said. "Work is...later. Late? Work is...undone. Not done."

There was no one else there. He looked up at the ceiling. "The other laundresses are not here?"

Anne was quiet, her hands in the water up to her elbow. She shrugged. "Go home."

"When the work is not done?"

A small frown came into her face, then. "Widow...brother...sick? Go...house. Brother's house. Boys with her. Other laundresses...not here."

He said nothing, then, only watched her a while. He could see how it was for her there, when the widow was out of the house, and he thought of all the things she likely was not telling him, or could not.

He could not bear the idea of her being worked like a thrall, but neither could he think of anything he could do. He was not her father or brother, nor any relative, and therefore had no claim or right. He had nothing he could do for her without blackening her reputation. It was bad enough that he was alone with her in the house.

But to sit there and watch her struggle to hide her exhaustion was unthinkable.

He stripped off his gloves and cloak, pushing his sleeves back. Coming to the other side of the tub, he tried to look decisive and said, "What should I do?"

She looked at him in sheer consternation, but when he determinedly plunged his hands into the water, she stopped him hastily and, trying to keep back a smile, set him at another task.

His embarrassment at taking his hand to a woman's labor was soon extinguished by both suds and the realization that it was much harder than it looked. Anne had to catch him at his mistakes more than a few times, and he knew he was splashing about and making more of a mess than necessary. When he finally managed to put his hands into the wrong tub and came back with fingers stained blue, Anne collapsed onto a stool, laughing breathlessly, such merriment in her face that he found that he did not mind at all.

"We shall see how you like it!" He reached for her white cap with the blue dye on his fingers, and was struck speechless when she dashed water in his face.

What happened next left them both dripping and laughing and a film of soap and bluish water on the floor. He could not remember laughing so freely in a long, long while, not even with his brother, and over something so childishly silly. A weight had lifted from his shoulders, and worry and care seemed very, very far away.

Anne came to where he leaned against the table, her white cloth and apron disappointingly free of blue spots, and she carried a deep bowl of warm water and a small soap cake. She set it down on the table, gave him a warning look, and took his hand.

The laughter died on his lips as quickly as it had been born, and he stood very stiffly as she took his left hand and pulled it into the water.

The blue stain did not come out easily, though she scrubbed with both her own hands and a cloth. The soap smelled faintly of honey, and he grew a little dizzy as she seemed to stand all too near. Her fingers were firm and strong for being so small, and he stared at how little and fragile her hands looked against only his left hand.

She was speaking under her breath, in her own language, but he thought he heard his name in the string of hard, sharp sound. When she looked up at him she was smiling, and he saw in their closeness and by the light of the hearth that her eyes were the living green of seas and feathers.

Their lips only touched, he brushing his mouth against hers, and her skin was smoother than he had ever imagined. Her eyes closed and she tilted her head, and his hand came to her neck and her hands against his chest.

She whispered "Damrod," and her breath was cider and bread and something like honey.

They pulled away, his hand most reluctant to leave her face.

Neither said anything, and when he looked at her she was blushing and biting her lip. He could not quite, _quite_, bring himself to be ashamed.

"Anne," he said, and she looked at him. "Say to me that I am not wanted here. Say to me that you do not want me, and I shall never come near you again."

"No," she said.

He knew she could not have understood more than half of what he'd said, but she'd refused it so quickly, so urgently. His heart was in his throat. "Then you understand that I ask more than your friendship, that I should, someday...that soon, I should..."

"Damrod," she said.

He looked to the floor, knowing what he wanted to say and that he could not say it then. When he looked up again, Anne had turned her back to set the overturned tub upright.

They worked more carefully and in silence, and soon all was set aright. He wondered how much of the work they had really gotten done, but the hour had grown very late and she was blowing out candles and turning the fire. He pulled on his gloves, his cloak, and took up again his arms. She wrapped a gray cloak around herself and they stepped out, she locking the door with a heavy key. The night was colder than it had been, and they walked briskly along the empty streets.

"I do not believe you are a laundress," he told her.

She said nothing.

"I do not care," he said.

At the old woman's house, Anne turned to look at him.

"I not lady," she told him frankly, and he was taken aback by the weary look of her eyes. "I not lady, not...not like you." She looked as if she would cry. "I not anything."

"I do not care," he said.

She bit her lip, turned away, and went up into the house, neglecting again to call him by his name.

He stood there until the door was closed and locked behind her, and then he made his own way home. And that night he did not sleep, but laid awake all the night thinking of what they had said to each other and looking at his blue-stained fingers.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

He stood back against the wall of the dyer's house and waited.

A woman stood on the step of the wash house. She wore the widow's black, and beside her was a tall man of dark hair and gray eyes. He wore the black and white of the Guards of the Citadel, and carried a helm fashioned with wings under his arm.

This was not the same Guard he had seen many days before, but looked very much the same. The widow was speaking to him in a familiar manner, and the likeness of their faces and their tall, straight bearings gave him to think they were brother and sister.

Whatever it was they spoke of, she finished by urging him to come in, and he did not need too much convincing. They went into the house, she leading the way, and for a while the door was shut.

He waited, trying hard to keep his eyes away from the door of the wash house.

They came out again after only a while, and a small boy was with them, his hand firmly in his mother's and his worshipful eyes fixed on the Guard's face.

The Guard now looked distracted. He stopped at the street to look behind him, up at the door she had closed behind her as if wanting to see beyond it and into the house again. The widow merrily scolded him for ignoring her and began to walk briskly down the street. He hesitated, glancing again at the house, before following.

He slowly let out the breath he had not known he held.

The door opened again and five or six women came out, talking and laughing, and Anne was the last, a familiar white cloth atop a gray cloak hurrying to where he stood under the cold lamp.

They walked without haste, the light still in the sky to the west. The days were lengthening, winter nearly gone and spring nearly there, the hot, bright summer stretching ahead. He would go away to the fields in summer, he knew, unless he found some reason to stay.

The market was still filled with people, boisterous with apprentices and workmen let go from their labors. Anne carried a thick leather bag on her shoulder, and when he offered to carry it for her, she shook her head.

The bag slowly filled with bread, vegetables, what fruits that could be had for a low price, cheeses, sugar, meats, and pots of ale that it fell to him to carry. A bolt of good wool went into her arms, as well as spools of thread, needles, packages of flax, and various other household things that she put into the bag until it grew full and heavy. At the woodcutter's, she bought bundles of firewood, which he took on his own shoulder.

He had expected to carry everything back to the street of laundresses, but instead she turned south toward the outer wall. He followed her closely, for dusk was falling and she was well-laden going into the poorer, darker parts of the city, yet she seemed unafraid.

At the street of wheelwrights, she stopped, turned to him, and said, with an odd expression, "I...go by myself, Damrod."

He looked at her. "You cannot think I will leave you here."

She bit her lip, and he saw that she did not really want him to come. But he would not let her go alone into the city as she was, and by and by she sighed and began walking again.

After a while, turning into an alley off of the street of cartwrights, she stopped at the shoddy door of a hovel and called softly, "Grandmother?"

The woman who lived in the hovel was old and thin, and nearly blind. There was no fire laid in her pitiful hearth, and she wept when Anne laid down one of her bundles of firewood and asked him to make a small, warm light.

They left food, needle, thread, and a good piece of the wool, which, he saw by the finished works that hung from hooks, the white-haired crone would sew into shirts.

At the door, Anne took her hand and told her gently, "Good night, Grandmother," before they went on.

There were four more of the same hovels, the first home to an old man and an old woman, husband and wife who were both too frail to work hard. Anne gave them flax for their loom as well as meat and wood. The second sheltered a woman and her children, no man to be seen, and she wept when Anne touched the children on their heads and gave them white bread to eat.

At the other two houses it was the same, and he saw that they were the poor of the city, women whose husbands had died or gone and who had no family or too many children or some of both. There were a few who were crippled, beggars missing limbs or eyes, one man clearly a soldier who had lost an arm, a leg, and an eye in battle and thus could not find work. There were too many children whose faces were thin with hunger, and he could not understand how such a thing could be in Minas Tirith.

He watched while Anne fed those she could and awkwardly babied the children who clung to her legs. When the last house was behind them, the leather bag and their arms were empty, but he saw how carefully she had measured what she had bought and given away, so that with even her meager money, she had managed to give each house what it needed to go on yet a while.

They walked slowly on their way to the rooming house, her face now pale and faint in the dark. A look of distant sadness had come into her eyes, and she neither spoke nor looked at him.

He wanted to ask her how long she had been doing this work, for it had been plain to see that she had been there before and often, the children calling her by name. He imagined her working at the wash house and at the rooming house as much as she did, and then spending her few coins with so free a hand.

His heart ached in his chest.

"Why?" he said at last.

She looked up at him, and he saw her frown.

"I cannot not," she said, and looked down at the street again. "I know...I know. I have to. I cannot...not know."

At the stoop, she turned and smiled for him, told him, "Good night, Damrod," and went up into the house. He watched for the light, remembered what her face had looked like when she realized that he had never known or bothered to know what she saw so plainly, and walked slowly to the Citadel to speak to his lord.


	7. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The paling dusk before first light was gray and cold. He turned his horse at the stoop, dismounted, and calmed him into standing still. The house was quiet, a smudge of woodsmoke beginning to drift from the chimney.

She appeared at the door, wrapped in her gray cloak and carrying her leather bag. A white-haired woman stood behind her, and Anne stopped to bid her good day before she came down to him. He lifted her with his hands about her waist, placing her on the horse so that she would be sitting before him in the saddle. His hands, gloved and large against her body, touched at her belly and at the small of her back.

When he mounted the horse behind her, she was so close against him that he felt the blood in his face and the disapproval that the watching woman shot at him like an arrow from an Ithilien longbow. But then Anne crooked her head to look up at him with an expression of such pleasure and exhilaration that he forgot all consideration of propriety and urged the horse into a quick walk.

So long before morning the streets were nearly empty, and by cockcrow they were at the Great Gates. The gate guards did not stop or question a cloaked man in the green and leathers of a Ranger, though they openly inspected the girl. A reproving look heavy with threat served to drop their eyes.

Outside the city, he turned the horse, whose name was Kho, toward the south.

The green land that sloped away from the city was thick with brume, and for a while all that they could see was the track at Kho's hooves and the road beside them. When the sun began to rise and the horizon lightened, the mist grew fainter and went to pieces, and they began to see the green fields around them and the blue sky over their heads. A north wind came blowing into the lowlands, and when midmorning came they could see all around them the fair downs of Pelennor.

Anne's cheek pressed to his shoulder as she turned her head to see the rolling country of Gondor where Minas Tirith stood. Though they rode fast and she sat sidesaddle, she was unperturbed by any stride Kho took, and kept even such an awkward seat with the poise of a born rider. The idea that she was Rohirrim came into his mind and lingered, but he had heard the people of Rohan were tall, and wore their hair long and in braids, and a girl of the Rohirrim would have known Westron.

"Here is Pelennor," he told her as they went by, and she murmured _Pelennor_ under her breath. "And that is the Rammas Echor, which Ecthelion father of Denethor built."

To keep Kho from exhaustion, he eased their pace when they had gone out of sight of the city. They had long left behind the Wall, and now rode beside the paved South Road. The White Mountains stood white-caped to the north, but spring had come into the lowlands, the air warm and the brown things beginning to bud. Here and there they saw way stones, which he spoke aloud for her and listened to her repeat. From the fields many dirt paths turned onto the Road, and every now and then they passed or overtook wains, the drivers staring at them as they went by in the track. Once, they passed a cart in which sat a family of five, and the three children's eyes were wide to see a green-clad Ranger with his bow and a girl in her gray cloak go by.

Anne put her hand on his arm below the wrist. "Where?"

"Lossarnach," he told her. "The Vale of Flowers."

"Lossarnach," she said, and it was a near-perfect mimicry of his own speech.

He felt the shape of her against the lines of his arms and chest, the top of her head just below his chin. Her body was hardly any weight against him, and if he thought that were he to lean forward and fold his arms, she would become lost in him.

The white cap she always wore had been tied tight against the wind. He said, "There will be archery."

"Archery," she repeated.

It was hot under his helm, and after a while, when he walked Kho a stretch to help him catch his breath, he took it off. She watched as he did so, and when he turned to look back along the road, she reached up and touched his hair where it fell against his neck. He felt her fingertips like drops of water against his skin.

"Damrod," he heard her say softly, but when he turned to her again she had righted herself, and was gazing out over the fields to the south.

She was so very small.

At noon they came to Ninluthur against the Erui River. The hall of the Lord of Lossarnach was a dark shape rising out of the wooded hill that overlooked the town, and the masts of no few boats stood white at the wharfs. With houses of stone much like the houses in Gondor and a wall of gray battlements and towers, Ninluthur was known for her blue dye and silversmiths, the men of that town chiefly occupied with harvesting woad from the fertile farmland along the river and mining silver from the mountains that shadowed them.

Banners and pennants shone bright in the sun from the tops of the towers and the highest roofs. Song and music drifted to where they approached, and through the open gates the streets were filled with the gaily dressed people of Lossarnach.

_"Wait!"_

Kho shuddered to a halt, tossing his head in protest. He watched, disconcerted, as Anne slipped to the ground, taking her leather bag from where he had slung it onto the saddle. Running off of the road, she went into the field and behind a tree.

He dismounted, talking quietly to Kho and stroking his neck to soothe him. "Anne?"

There was a muffled noise, and then he briefly saw an empty sleeve dangling. Alarmed, he looked quickly up and down the road, certain that at any second, someone would come riding up and see her unclothed, and then he would have to kill and bury them in the woods.

When he looked back, she was standing there, looking at him shyly.

The gown was nearly the same hue of green as his Ranger's garb, dark and secretive. Simple, with long, loose sleeves and a low, wide leather belt etched with leaves, it hung from her shoulders and her hips, clinging to the gentle slopes of stomach and breast. A modest cut and hem left only a blush of skin at the hollow her neck and the tips of her small fingers.

A green cloth, wound about and fastened with a small, silver leaf, covered her hair.

He stood there, unable to move, unable to take his eyes away from her.

A faint blush brightened her face.

"Anne," he said, and could not recognize his own voice.

He held his hand out to her. She put her hand in his, and it was smaller and softer than he could have imagined, and her fingers fit as perfectly as if their only purpose was to be held by his.


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

They rode into Ninluthur in silence, he in his hood and she in her bound hair, and though the heart of Lossarnach was alive with laughter and song. they carried with them a certain stillness that pulled the eyes, so that many there watched them go by and wondered that a lord of the Dunedain should come riding into Waterdown, a lady of leaves set high before him.

He quickly found good stabling for Kho, for Ninluthur housed many travelers in their guesthouses and were used to providing for animals. When that had been seen to, he turned to Anne and asked her, "Are you hungry?"

"Yes!"

The tension between them broke, and he laughed. She raised her eyebrow at him, something that he'd never experienced from anyone but his father and brother.

They went into the squares where long tables had been laden with food from the Lord of Lassarnach's larders. Anne seemed to avoid the meats and fish, preferring breads and fruits, though he persuaded her to taste the dish of pheasant. When he asked her, "Will you have ale?" she answered, "Ye - _No_," and drank cider and the water drawn from springs.

Though it was a feasting day, the market yet had stalls open, for money flowed more generously from revelers. They wandered at whim, mostly hers, and he could not help smiling at seeing her so delighted. She seemed to want to look at everything, and pulled him here and there, her hand in his and her cheek at leading him unmatched by anyone but perhaps his brother.

At a whiles, they came to a bowyer displaying his work, and she hesitated. She stood still and seemed to want to speak, and he thought he saw her hand curve as if holding the haft of a bow. But then she turned away and continued on, and, coming to a swordsmith, stood for longer. He, watching her, perceived longing in her face as she looked at various blades, and felt something stir in his heart.

Close beside where they were stood a silversmith's, and, while she was turned away, he looked idly at the work. And there, between a man's ring and a girl's bangle, he saw a thing that seemed to speak unasked of his very thoughts.

When he turned back and returned to where she stood still lost in the blades, the swordsmith had come to where she stood, looking askance as if he did not know what to say. As he approached again, off in the distance, a hunting horn sounded high and bright.

"The archery shoot," the swordsmith explained. "Lord Forlong has pledged an arrow of gold to the victor, in honor of his son's name day."

Anne took his sleeve to keep from being swept away, and together they walked along with the crowd.

In the field where the shoot would take place, the people of Ninluthur were gathered and the participants already lining up. He saw Lord Forlong the Old in the seat of honor in the covered stand, accompanied by Forlong the Young and his household. There were more lords there than he had thought, for he recognized several different coats and shields. A young man bearing the arms of the lord of Ringlo Vale was there, as well as two youths who looked very alike in the coat of Blackroot Vale, and one he recognized from long ago as Golasgil's son from Anfalas. A young boy wearing the coat of the high family of Lamedon with several men-at-arms around him stood beside a tall man in green that he saw was Hirluin the Fair of Pinnath Gelin.

He had not realized how well-liked Lord Forlong was, whom the lord of Minas Tirith called the Fat. Perhaps there was something, then, to how he had always heard that the country lords preferred their own company to the high of Gondor's chief city, who were always distant to their rural cousins. He found it troubling, and resolved to speak on it when next he was in council. More fitting would have been the presence of a son of the Steward, rather than the gifts that had been sent in place.

The participants seemed made up chiefly of the young lords, except for the young boy of Lamedon who looked put out to be excluded. A few men who looked to be soldiers stood there, as well as two men wore the green and brown of rangers, and several who were commonly dressed, and all these made up nearly a score of shooters.

"You would see more in the front," he said, but turned to find that she was not there.

Alarmed, he searched the crowd near him, but could not see her. Had she become distracted and separated? But he could not hear anyone calling his name, and she had had his sleeve. Had she gone off deliberately, without telling him?

Or had she been seized?

At the thought of a man laying hands on Anne, an anger he had never before felt came into his heart and he'd taken the breath to cry out her name and laid his hand on his sword hilt before he realized that his bow, too, was gone.

A horn blew, and he heard the crowd cheer as the shooters strung their bows. At the last minute, a figure broke from the stands and took the last place, and there was a good-natured laugh when it was seen that the newcomer was only a boy carrying a bow too big for him

He reached back to his quiver and felt for the nocks of his five arrows. There were none.

The horn sang again, and twenty arrows took flight. All struck their marks, and all were quiet as the judge, a captain of Lord Forlong's guard, went out to look.

Ten arrows had struck well, and these were Duilin and Derufin of Blackroot Vale, Hirluin the Fair, Dervorin of Ringlo Vale, Forlong the Young, the two rangers, a soldier who looked to be one of Lord Forlong's household guards, a young man with his hunting bow, and the boy, who wore a gray cloak atop hose and fine riding boots.

A third time the horn, and three arrows were deemed the finalists. These were Duilin of Blackroot Vale, Hirluin the Fair, and the boy.

Now the people grew loud in their wondering, for the boy was hardly taller than a child, and his bow was fine but too large. The lords were watching him, Lord Forlong himself whispering questions to his steward.

He pushed to the front of the crowd, growing light-headed with disbelief when he set his eyes on the boy-archer in the last place.

The third heat was to be shot individually, and Duilin was first. His arrow struck the edge of the gold, and it was said that it would be a hard shot to beat.

Hirluin the Fair was second, and his arrow struck unerring center.

A deafening cheer broke from the stands, and the men-at-arms of Hirluin's retinue sang the refrain of a Green Hills drinking song.

Now the boy came forward.

It was Anne, he was sure, for the height was the same, and the cloak, and he was speechless at the sight of her legs in boots and hose. Could no one else see that it was a woman, a girl? But her hood was up, the cloak fastened against the chest with no sign of her gown, and she had been shooting as well as lords and rangers alike.

He could not think of a way to stop her and bring her away without revealing everything.

Anne did not seem to notice scrutiny or silence, and she stood straight and bold. One hand (she was wearing his gloves, he saw) drew back the string of the Ithilien longbow in a single, slow pull. The bow arced at her touch as easily as it did under his own hand, and he saw that she drew the green and gold fletching back behind her ear, farther than any other archer's pull.

He saw the grace of her body against the bow, the arrow at her eye, the effortless perfection of her shot.

The arrow flew like light and split Hirluin the Fair's arrow down the middle.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Silence filled the field.

Hirluin the Fair laid his hand on her shoulder, his own face bright with wonder. But when she turned to look up at him from beneath her hood, his eyes widened, he stood there looking at her with an open mouth, and it was too late to do anything.

Duilin was already standing next to Hirluin, who still had her by the shoulder. Anne faced them boldly, though she did not lower her hood, and when Forlong the Old came to her side, she turned and looked at him unhesitating.

He watched as they stood there, she a still and faceless shape of a boy in a cloak carrying a bow and they the lords of all the Stone-land.

Forlong laughed. He laughed as though he could not help himself, and though his voice was first alone, it was soon joined by those others watching, by a man in his retinue, a woman somewhere behind, and more and more until laughter swept the field, followed and attended by clapping and hailing cries.

Hirluin threw back his head with mirth, and Forlong called for the arrow to be brought. He himself placed it in her hand, his eyes giving the lie to his grave countenance.

Anne then bowed low in the manner of lordly men, and Forlong the Old nodded his head in turn. Bow in one hand and the golden arrow in the other, she turned quickly, the cloak low in her face, and strode from the open space.

He saw Hirluin go after her, raising his hand to dismiss the retainers who would have followed him, and he also saw that she hurried through the questioning crowd, slipping by their attentions like a bird through the branches. She went quickly to where the commons came up to the buildings, and then down a street and out of his sight.

Now alarmed, he hurried on his own way, hastening unhindered through the dispersing throng.

The stable where he had left the black Kho was empty but for the animals. As he came to Kho's stall, he thought he heard a noise, and looked in to find her, her hood pulled back to reveal her green-wrapped head, stowing a wrapped bundle into the leather bag.

He folded his arms and leaned casually against the wall, waiting for her to look at him. When she did, her expression was all mischief and cheek, defying him to scold her.

Repressing, he let instead his head lower to one side and looked meaningfully at the bow she still held, and the two arrows remaining, as well as the gloves that he had last left on his belt.

A blush rose in her face, and some measure of guilt.

"I am sorry, Damrod," she said softly, but still stubbornly.

He looked at her sternly, even as he relented by taking the hand that did not hold the bow. "You know," he told her, and his voice was not nearly so reproving as it should have been, "if you had _asked_..."

Now she looked almost tearful with shame, and he laughed without intending to to see her so. "At least do not to do it again, or you will have all Gondor laughing at me for being so easily robbed by a girl."

She gave him such a fierce look that he laughed again, and then they both heard the noise of someone coming into the stable. She threw back her hood and cloak, and he saw that her gown had been pulled up to her knees and pinned there, exposing her boots and shins. He took the bow and both arrows, she removed the pins and let the hem down to cover her legs, and then a stable boy walked by carrying a sack of feed.

Now feeling a little foolish, he glanced at her. She, looking relieved, said hopefully, "Leave now?"

They walked Kho to the gates, she sitting and he leading, and people who had seen them in the street hailed them as they left. The sun was westering, the day nearly done, and lamps and fires had been lit. Music drifted on the warm evening air even as they reached the wall, and he could not help the relief he felt at having escaped the dancing.

At the gate, a tall man approached them. He was alone, with none to accompany him, but there was still light enough in the sky to recognize his bearing, his arms, and the long fair hair for which he, in a country of shorter, darker people, was renowned.

"My lord," he said, and bowed, and Hirluin the Fair returned it.

"My lord," Hirluin answered, and his eyes were on Anne. "You are strayed from Ithilien, and with fair company."

"We tarried a while to celebrate the name of Forlong's son," he said through teeth that were unexpectedly gritted, "and leave now to avoid traveling by night."

Hirluin smiled, not at him but for her, and he wondered if she found the lord of Pinnath Gelin good-looking. "Won't you give me even a name? I should know whom to call on when next I go into Minas Tirith."

"A lady from the city," he said. "You would not recognize her house."

Shaking his head, Hirluin looked at him ruefully. "I had not thought you to be a jealous man, my lord. Surely there is no harm in my speaking with a lady, or knowing whom to greet if I see her? You think me more of a scoundrel than I am."

He could think of no real excuse, and would not lie. "Her name is Anne."

"Anne?"

There was a little silence. "Anne," he said, "a laundress and a maid."

He regretted the words even as he spoke them. Hirluin's eyes had become cold.

"You have a crueler nature than I had heard, my lord," said the lord of Pinnath Gelin, "and, for certain, less regard for honor than it has been said, else you would not be here with her unchaperoned, whatever her birth or place. But that is to be expected, with such examples having been set for you."

Now angrier than he had ever been in his life, he said to Hirluin, "Do not speak of her in such a manner again, or one of us will not walk away. You do not know me, or you would not say what you have. Anne holds my honor in her hands."

Hirluin's eyes became wide, and he looked from Anne to him. And then his brow cleared, and a grin made him yet more comely.

"Forgive me, my lord," said Hirluin the Fair. "I spoke without understanding, and by only what I had heard and not what I knew. This hasty tongue has usually been my burden." He held out his hand. "Come, let us not be enemies, for I believe I like you all the more for what is going to soon, I think, get you into a lot of trouble."

They clasped forearms, then, each smiling ruefully at the other, and then Hirluin turned to Anne, who had been quietly watching. He bowed low, and when he looked up, she smiled. He winced, and elbowed him with a whispering "I did not think I was a jealous man, either, but I learn more than I wanted to today." Then Hirluin the Fair took his leave of them, and they made their way out of Ninluthur.


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

They departed by the East-gate, but following the river rather than the road. Ninluthur burned yellow with lamp- and firelight behind them, the western sky a fading purple as the vale shadowed and darkened into dusk.

They rode up into the hills, the mountains looming over them, and the trees grew larger and thicker. Kho found his footing with little trouble, and he soon saw what he looked for half a mile higher, on the knees of Mindolluin.

"See," he told her, "it is the White Barrow, where uilos grows, in the shadow of the mother-mountain of Minas Tirith."

They dismounted, and went then on foot, he leading Kho. Though it was dark, the top of the hill seemed to glow with light, and when they reached the summit and walked along the face of the Barrow, it seemed Kho's hooves sank to the fetlocks in white flowers. A pale glimmer hung over the ground, and though all else was night-hid and lightless, the moon high and cold, where the uilos grew he could see the color of her eyes when she looked at him.

"Uilos," he said, "the Evermind, called in Rohan the simbelmyne, the flower that grows where lie the quiet dead." He looked off into the flowers, to the other side of the White Barrow where it sloped down again to the mountainside. "People say it is a sad flower, to only grow on graves and loss. But I always thought it the most steadfast, remembering long after there is no one else left who does."

She was turning in a circle where she stood, her eyes wide. When she looked at him again, there was a childish wonder in her face that he had not seen in her before.

From nowhere, from somewhere, music came drifting on the wind, the soft music of a lute. Ninluthur was not far away, and the White Barrow was high enough to look down on gleams of yellow light.

He hesitated, then held out his hand. "Anne..."

She looked at him, looked at his hand. He felt embarrassed, ready to take it back, but then she reached out and put her small hand in his.

They danced, he leading her slowly and carefully through each step, she following with inexpressible grace, and it was a dance he had seen his brother execute enough times in their more youthful years to be able to do it himself, a dance that the older people disliked for its displays and that the younger people disobeyed them to dance for how deeply it spoke of love and slow, quiet longing.

He had never liked dancing, for he felt foolish and a bungler beside his quick, bold brother. But this was moving in time to her, her breath and body matching his in turns and closeness, and their hands coming together, coming apart, and it was as if nothing else existed and there was no one to see if he fumbled, if he missed a step, for she only looked at him as if he were the whole world.

The music had faded almost as soon as it had come, but they danced on by the light of the uilos, the white flowers of the dead, and they seemed to speak to each other without speaking.

At the last turn of the dance, they slowed and stopped, his hand on hers and standing very close.

She laughed, softly, gently, and said to him, "Damrod," but he shook his head to stop her.

From his neck he took two fine chains.

"When you are not there, I feel as though I sleep," he said, "and when you come near, I wake."

He showed her the two trees that lay branches entwined, carved of culumalda wood, one with its bare branches and one leafed in silver, each no bigger than her thumb. He showed her how the branches could be taken apart to make two trees, but looked lonely and incomplete by themselves, and gave the silver-leafed to her on its own chain, keeping the bare-branched one. He showed her how he put his back on his own chain, and wore it around his neck.

He did not tell her that he had spent sleepless nights carving them, did not tell her that he had gone into North Ithilien in the gloaming to find the wood, burned himself and brought the Master Silversmith's rebukes down on his head in insisting on doing the silver-work himself.

She laid her hands against her eyes, and he thought she wept. He pulled gently at her hands, saw her face wet with tears, and, gathering her up in his arms as if she were a child, lifting her off the ground, he kissed her.

"Damrod," she whispered, and they lingered a while on the White Barrow, by the light of the quiet, nameless dead.


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

They rode back to Minas Tirith through the dark of night. For the first hour he whispered to her the different stars in the sky, like the Helluin, the Borgil, and Gil-Estel, Earendil's Star, and he traced the shapes of the heavens for her as she leaned her head against his shoulder - Menelvagor, Remmirath, Wilwarin, and the Valacirca, the Silver Sickle.

At a while she slept, and he rode in silence, listening to her breathe and his own thoughts. He remembered again the look of her against the bow, and how she looked at him, how she looked at everyone, as if she had never met her match, her head unused to bowing, her eyes unused to giving way. He thought of how she walked, unabashed, how unlike a maiden, how like a lord, and how she did not hesitate to protect those she deemed in need of her, whatever the cost.

The going was neither slow nor fast, for he did not want to disturb her where she slept against him, and he let Kho have his head. The downs here were wide and dark, with the fires of hearths and torches few and far, the patrol come and gone. The night was filled with the odd noises of the country, of fox barks and owls and crickets, noises long gone from Ithilien, and under it was Anne's hushed, soft sleep.

He heard no hoof beats or any whinny, and when a shape, large and quick, streaked by on his right, he stiffened and stilled, pulling Kho to a halt.

Anne sighed but did not wake, though her eyes and her mouth moved as if she were conscious and speaking. He held her close with his free arm, considering whether to stand and fight, or to urge Kho into a run. He could hear nothing.

And then, without warning, he was aware of a horse standing before them.

Though the night was bright with stars and moon, he could hardly see the beast in front of them. He made out its shape, its long, arching neck, its long, long legs, but it was as if a shadow was hung over the rest, for he could tell nothing else, and that shadow seemed made of things deep and dark that drank the light of moon and stars and grew only darker and deeper still.

There was no wind, but the night was suddenly bitter cold. He realized that he could hear nothing. All animal and insect noise was gone as if everything everywhere had fallen silent at once, and neither could he hear anything from the black horse, not harsh breath, not the fidgets of any horse standing still. The only sounds were of Kho's breathing, his tail switching from side to side, his own heartbeat, unnaturally loud, and the black, stagnant thing, motionless as no horse was motionless.

He looked down at Anne, and realized she had become very still. He could hardly tell if she breathed, so listless and silent was her small body against him, and fear crept into his heart as he looked down on her lolling head.

When he raised his eyes again, the horse-shape was still there, but now he thought he saw a light, dark and small and nightmarish, shining dully from two black holes in the creature's head, and now Kho shuddered once, an awful shudder that seemed to shake the very bones of his body, and he did not look away but took Anne, cold, still Anne, in his arms and faced resolutely ahead.

Then the horse-shape was gone, the road empty and bright with moonlight, and from the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a shining white horse go by.

Anne stirred in his arms and sighed, and her skin grew warm. She looked up at him, her half-lidded eyes filled with sleep, and whispered, "Damrod?"

He exhaled slowly, stroked Kho's neck to find it damp with sweat, and saw Minas Tirith, white and fair, up ahead.


	12. Chapter 12

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

"They come now to the shores of the Anduin," said Mablung. "We have slain scores while they attempted the crossing. They grow bolder every day, and the last of our Rangers have been harried out. We have no more spies on the eastern shore, and half of Osgiliath is lost as it was last year."

He looked down at the map, eyes following the black markings that demarcated the infested land. They came closer and closer to Minas Tirith every week, and today stretched even to where the bridge had once stood on the Great River. Every day, there were more.

"We must turn them back," he said finally. "If they cross the river, we will be fighting them in the Pelennor. We must push them east again, as we did before."

"The hordes that come out of the Black Land these days are numberless," said Mablung. "We have already suffered more losses than we did last year. We will need reinforcements and resupplying."

"Then you must petition the Steward," he said, "and good luck to you on that! For my part, I would rather send his son to do the asking."

The others laughed, a low, grim thunder that filled the small chamber of tables and maps, but Mablung only shook his head and looked at him strangely.

He had seen that same look many times in recent weeks, looks that the men and the servants gave him when they thought he did not see. It came most often when he laughed, or made a joke, or offered any kind of open good humor, a look as if they were caught off-guard by his cheer like by something they had not expected but eagerly welcomed.

"We go out again on the first day of summer," he said. "Until then we rest and replenish. Fortify the sentries on the borders, and put watches on the roads. Listen for the call to arms the day after Tuile, for we shall have the Steward's say by then." He hesitated. "And be wary, for there are dark things abroad at night."

They looked at him questioningly then, but he said nothing else. The captains stood and stretched and spoke quietly to each other as they left. Mablung lagged behind, his eyes wary as he waited to speak separately.

When the door closed, Mablung came closer and lowered his voice. "You know I would not speak of such things if I did not have reason."

That he spoke at all on anything meant he was troubled. "I know this, Mablung, as you know that it will change nothing."

"For the sake of our long friendship, let me speak openly," said Mablung. "The others are glad for you. I am glad for you. You are happier now than I have ever known you to be, and I would give much to help you keep it. But you must know that this can come to no good. You must know what our lord will say."

"I know," he said, "and I will face what comes, whatever it is."

"For a maid! A laundress!"

There was a silence then, and when he slowly turned to look at him, Mablung was chilled by the warning he saw in his eyes.

"Do you spy on more than the doings of our enemies now?" he said coldly. "Do you skulk after me in the streets?"

"I hear what is said by less cautious tongues," said Mablung, unhappy, yet resolute. "I am no teller of tales nor a scandalmonger, but you must know what they whisper of you. They say that a Ranger from the Citadel goes walking with a girl from the city where anyone can see. They say he goes to her every day, that they spend time together unchaperoned. They say..." Here Mablung faltered. "They say these two were witnessed leaving the city together in the morning, and returning late at night."

He felt the temper rising in him, the temper for which his family was widely known and that he had also, though deeper buried in him than in his brother. "You presume too much. You are not my father."

"I am your friend and comrade," said Mablung, "and I would sooner believe Orcs capable of showing mercy than I would you of dishonor. I say these things not to hurt you or rebuke you, but so that you might not hear it from crueler tongues, and in hope that you will see sense."

"She is no maid. No laundress."

Mablung said nothing.

"She..." He did not want to share his suspicions, not yet, but he spoke anyway. "She shoots a bow as well as a Ranger. She worsted Hirluin of Pinnath Gelin."

A brow was raised. "A woman shot down Hirluin the Fair?"

He turned away, looked out the narrow window. The arrow slit was bright and warm with late light. "She is not what she seems, Mablung, and before you make your lists, your contentions, know that there is nothing you are thinking that I have not already argued to myself. She is not nobly born. I do not care. She is an orphan, with no family or foster or bride price. I do not care. She did not, when we met, speak Westron. I have taught her, so that she might refuse me if she wished, and she has not."

"A foreigner?" cried Mablung, and seemed, for the first time, really dismayed. "What people in all the lands of the world do not speak Westron?"

"I do not care," he said. "Wherever she comes from, whoever she is, I do not care. I will not be dissuaded from my course. I will not be parted from her."

Mablung looked at him differently now, both resigned, bleakly and against his judgment, and wonderingly, as if he were unsure who stood before him. "It is worse than I thought it, then," he said heavily, as if to himself. "It is more than infatuation."

He shook his head. "You know me too well to say that."

"Yes," said Mablung, distracted. "I have known you long enough to understand that it is your brother who loves freely and easily, whereas you always give all your heart or none of it."

There was a lull, Mablung embarrassed for having said it and he for having heard it.

"Have you heard anything in court?" he asked quietly.

"The same things as we have always heard. The Elves are plotting, like they always are, and their people have been seen everywhere asking questions. Harad schemes and the Enemy stirs. Rohan is restless again, the hothead prince and his hothead cousin thrashing up and down the Wold making trouble. They've been uncontrollable since the king recovered from his illness. I understand they're supposed to be looking for a shieldmaiden, more of their superstitious..."

There was another silence, but this one was breathless and light. He turned away, trying to avoid the sudden question in Mablung's face.

"If she were," Mablung whispered. "If she is, then..."

"I do not know," he said. "I do not know, and I do not care."

Mablung sighed. "You make more trouble for yourself than your enemies do," he said at last. "This will go hard for you, I think, and harder still for her, for she has no one to stand by her and protect her."

He walked to the door, turned to look at Mablung as he opened it.

"That," he said, "is no one's honor but mine."


	13. Chapter 13

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The day before Tuile, as Anor westered on the peaks of Ered Nimrais, he went down to the street of laundresses.

He came with his hood down, for he had long stopped wearing a helm when coming to see her, and now went simply outfitted in cloak and leather. He wore a sword and a dagger on his belt, but no bow on his back for being in the city. The light stayed in the sky later in those dying days of winter, and it was almost too hot for cloaks.

The streets were not as empty as they normally were, for Tuile was tomorrow and there was so much to be done before then. The street of laundresses was no exception, with the houses sending out the last of the deliveries and arguing with the boys and the porters at their doors. Hawkers walked to and fro, offering hot ale and cider in stalls and bits of food for the people hurrying by, exhorting him to stop and have a bite. They recognized him for how often he came, greeted him as "my lord" or "sire," and he nodded to the sellers of fruit and cider, the stalls he frequented most.

The house of the widow should have been bright and busy, but though the light shone in its windows, its door was shut and no one went in or out. He saw, as he came nearer, that all the laundresses who worked for the widow were standing at the stoop, sharing a cup and talking quietly to each other. When he came close enough for them to notice him, they fell silent.

He looked for Anne and did not see her. As they stood, he awkwardly a few strides away and they whispering before the door, he saw that they were getting attention, the windows of the near houses filled with faces, the costers in the streets carefully averting their eyes but staying in earshot. The porters slowed as they passed, peered around the houses to stare, and slowly an expectant hush crept into the street, even the cries of the vendors falling away.

A boy standing with his fellows was looking at him, and he recognized the boy as the one who had, weeks earlier, warned him to look elsewhere. He nodded to him, for he liked the child, made fond by the memory of him protecting Anne from a stranger's questions.

The boy made a face, spat in the street, and rushed off around the house.

He stood, disbelief warring with anger. The boy was not so young, on the cusp of manhood, and grown men had been put into stocks for less.

But then the door of the widow's house opened, and Anne came out.

She wore her white cap and gray cloak, and in one hand she carried a small bundle. The widow came out behind her, tall and severe in black, and her face was one of anger and sorrow and regret.

The women on the stoop hastily made way for Anne when she came down, and he saw that, for once, her head was held high, so that anyone might see her face. Pale but resolute, she still smiled to see him, and, as if it were any other day, came boldly to where he stood.

"Damrod," she said softly, and he turned to walk with her.

"Ungrateful," a woman's voice hissed.

"Wanton," spat another, and beneath them all, in a whisper, _"Whore."_

He turned on his heel, such wrath in his face that all who saw him fell back, the women trembling. But the widow had stepped forward, cried "Hold your tongues!" Her anger seemed no less than his, made bitter with unhappiness, and they cowered before her as much as him.

Anne neither turned nor took any notice of what had happened, only touched his arm. He stifled his own outrage, let her urge him down the street and away from the widow's house, and as they walked he grew less angry and more stricken as he began to think he understood what had happened.

They walked quietly for much of the way, she lost in her own thoughts and he watching her. Halfway to the rooming house where she lived, she seemed to come back to herself and turned to him with a smile that seemed to pierce him.

"Do you want to see?" she asked brightly, and, when he nodded, took his hand and began hurrying a different way.

The street of blacksmiths was not far from the street where the higher-priced armorsmiths and bladesmiths made their trade, and he had been there many times before. Here, as in the rest of the city, work was still going on, and he followed in growing perplexity as she led him down to the southernmost end of the street of blacksmiths where it was quieter and not as crowded, and there to the door of an old house beside a small shop. Light shone in the windows of the house, and Anne took from her pocket a key that opened the heavy door.

He recognized the old man sitting by the fire, as well as the old woman, the man's wife, sitting at the loom in the corner of the house. Anne went to each of them with a kiss, and they looked at him with some apprehension.

"My lord," rasped the old man, and both began to rise, but he held up his hand to stay them both.

"Damrod!" Anne again took his hand and pulled him to where a door stood in the east wall, going through it without hesitation. He glanced back into the house with some embarrassment, but neither looked at him.

It was a small forge, he saw when she had lit a lamp sitting on a table, swept clean and tools already put away. The furnace stood cold and quiet, the fires already banked for the night. At the far wall stood a rack, on which he saw three sheathed swords.

"This. This is mine," said Anne. "Grandfather, he teach...he taught me. I know, I knew, before, but he taught me...more. Look, Damrod. It's mine."

He looked, not knowing what to say. Hers? The forge was hers? And what had Grandfather taught her? She could not mean what she was saying, but she was speaking so clearly, her voice so proud. The old man he had seen in the house was too old, too frail to wield a hammer.

Anne went to the rack, pulled off the sword lain highest. She turned back, its black shape lying across her upheld hands, and she seemed now very shy, shyer than she had been for a long while.

"Damrod," she whispered. "I make...I made this. For you."

He took the sword from her, and when he laid his hand on its grip to unsheathe it, it felt as if it had been made for his hand and no other. It came free of the sheathe with a sound like a sigh, and it sang as he swung it through the air.

The shape and style of the sword was unfamiliar, though similar in most respects to other swords he had seen. The blade shone even in the dark, and it was impossibly light for a sword of its size and width. He felt no strain on his arm as he held it, and, as he examined it, his eye was caught.

Down the body of the blade, laid carefully over the fuller, was the painstakingly cut inscription of two trees, its branches twined as if embracing. It had been elongated to fit the blade, but was unmistakably the same design as on the two trees he had made, one that he wore and the other that she did.

He lowered the blade and turned to look at her.

Anne blushed. "Do you...do you like it?"

It could not be. It had only been days since Ninluthur, and even if he were willing to believe that a woman could forge a sword...

But it lay in his hand, the loveliest sword he had ever seen, that fit in his grip and moved with his arm as no other sword ever had, and it was perfect and strange and...

"Are you a shieldmaiden?" he asked, and the question came less by his own will than against it.

The light faded from her face, and now she was wary, watchful, and it seemed to him as if a shadow had come between them.

He went toward her and she moved back.

The sword glimmered between them. He sheathed it.

She was standing very still, but there was something in her eyes like fear, fear in a fearless face, and he thought now that she looked more like a hunted creature than anything else. A hart in the wood, listening for the howl of dogs.

"I do not care if you are," he told her quietly. "That you are a shieldmaiden does not change you."

She looked frightened now, her lips parting as if she would speak but for the fear that killed the words in her mouth. He wanted to take her in his arms, to tell her that it meant nothing if she were a shieldmaiden, that she did not have to hide her nature from him, he would not disdain her for her warrior's ways. He wanted to tell her that he would stand by her against anyone, that he -

"I am not a virgin," she said.

It came so suddenly, he could not understand. At first he could say nothing, then, "What?"

Her face was white. "I have been with a man before," she told him, and her words were so blunt that he felt distaste at them. "I loved before you. I am not untouched. I am not a virgin."

_"Stop,"_ he cried.

She stood straight, her head high, and her voice was clear, bold. Her eyes held his, and he saw that she spoke truth.

He could not speak. He could barely look at her. Abruptly, he turned and went from the room and from the house, seeing and hearing nothing.

The streets were not empty, but he knew nothing. He walked without seeing, consumed utterly by the emptiness in his chest, and when he came back to himself, he had only closed the door to his own chambers in the Citadel.

The stiffness in his hand made him look down, and he realized he was still holding the sword she had given him, the sword she had made.

A desperate, terrible cry torn from his throat, he threw the sword as hard as he could, and it struck the wall with a discordant clangor before crashing to the floor.


	14. Chapter 14

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The half-light before morning was gray and flat. The fog was thick and white, a soft damp that muffled noise and obscured shapes, but still the streets were filled with hurrying people, with sleep-tousled apprentices, yawning maids, servants, kitchen boys, a page or two in their sharp-pressed surcoats, tradesmen and their wives in their last preparations. The gates were already open, the guests of the fair that the city would host arriving, from the peasant families on foot or in carts with the livestock to be sold in tow to the country nobles on their fine horses and in carriages, the space for which would have to be found outside the city in the tents and makeshift stalls that had already begun to come up.

The week preceding had been completely taken up with the arrival of merchants, their pack trains and caravans crowding the streets and filling the markets. The bulk of the Spring Festival would be held on the fields outside the city walls, on the grounds that the Keepers of the Fair had already established and marked, but it was considered a distinction to find lodgings or stalls in the city, where prices would be highest. Minas Tirith was full to bursting, and he saw strange faces wherever he looked as he walked from the Tunnel-Way to the street of blacksmiths, from the tall, fair-haired people of Rohan to the darker-haired strangers from Erebor and Dale. He saw a Beorning going into a guesthouse, and there, come from the gates, drawing many looks, three gray-bearded Dwarves.

Anor had not yet risen, and the small house on the street of blacksmiths was dark and quiet in the white air. He searched each window, as if he could see through the oiled parchment, to find whichever room or garret she slept in, her uncovered hair against the pillow.

The door was locked. Putting his back to the street, he forced it without too much noise, and went quickly inside, as if he had every right. No alarm was raised as he shut it behind him.

When he turned, she stood there.

The white cap was in place, and she wore her brown dress, though no apron. Her feet were bare, and in one hand she held a long dagger.

They stood, watching each other, and she was very still. He saw the wary look of her eyes, the way her shoulders were braced as if she waited for a blow she knew would come, the coiled tension of her body, like a drawn bow. Her jaw was set, like he had seen men's jaws set as the surgeon prepared to cut their shattered legs off at the knees.

He said nothing, and after a while she turned away, walked to a table that sat against the far wall beside the hearth. There she laid the dagger down beside several bundles of dried herbs, and sank wearily onto a bench.

He looked away from her, at the walls, the floor, the tables. This is the house of a peasant, he thought to himself, and looked at the piles of folded cloth that lay against a wall, the herbs and pouches and pestle and mortar that sat on the table, the loom in the corner, the pot that hung over the ashes in the fireplace. The walls were bare, there were no lanterns, but the floor was covered with fresh, sweet-smelling rushes. That door he knew went into the shop, that large window, shuttered and bolted tightly, he surmised let out an awning and a table on which to display wares in the street, a thing he had seen enough times in the street to guess at from inside, and through a second doorway he could see a steep, stone stair that led to the upper floor. A third door was closed, and he thought perhaps that was a kitchen.

Everything was very clean, very cramped, and very bare. He could not think how anyone could live in such a place.

He looked at her again, and she was holding a needle in one hand and a cloth in the other. He did not know how she could see in the dark, and anyway she seemed very awkward at what she was doing, frowning in concentration as she worked very, very slowly. Despite not knowing much about needlework, even he could tell she was making a mess of things, and, watching her trying to sew as if she had never sewn anything in her life, he thought of how easily, how naturally her hand had fit the haft of a bow.

"Anne," he said, and she stilled.

He wondered if he sounded as tired as he felt. He had not slept more than a few hours in three days, and felt exhaustion dulling his head. The night before had been a nightmare, a nightmare from which he felt as if he were finally waking.

She opened her mouth to speak but he shook his head, dropped to his knees before her. His hands gripped the plank of the bench, and then he lay his head down in her lap, his mouth against her knee.

He felt her tremble. He felt the warmth of her against his skin, and he wanted nothing more than to sleep.

And then her fingers touched his hair, hesitating, tentative, and the deepest, most bottomless relief took the last of his doubts and his fears from him, and he took her in his arms, pulled her to him, his head against her waist, and held her as a husband long gone to war came home and held his wife.

He did not know how long he stayed there, but after a while she pulled away and they stood up, her hands in his. He felt as if he would collapse, as if he had just recovered from a grave wound or illness, and he did not object or hang back when she led him to the stairs and up, whispering to help him in the dark.

The garret room was small and clean. The bed was the largest thing in it, a straw-filled mattress covered with linen and wool blankets that smelled of lavender, suspended on ropes from a small wooden frame. A trestle against the wall was scraped and wiped, and a heavy trunk, nearly a third of the size of the bed, stood at the foot of it. The window was small and papered, between the table and the bed, and beneath it was a stool. A pitcher and a bowl sat on the table.

He stood still while she unclasped his cloak and took it from his shoulders. She undid the straps and buckles of his leathers as proficiently as if she had handled armor all her life, and the belt with his sword as quickly. There he saw her hesitate, saw her recognize the blade he had worn, and when she turned away he thought he saw the glimmer of tears.

At her urging he sat on the bed, and she pulled his boots off. Her touch as she helped him was something he had never experienced before yet felt was familiar, the ghost of tenderness he had once known and forgotten. He felt an unusual pleasure in it, at being touched in such a way, and he wondered if this was what it was like for the men of his company who had wives, who went home to this whenever they could, and he felt a sudden, possessive rush.

When she had his boots off, she poured water from the pitcher and brought the bowl to him, and she washed his face and hands. Then, when he was clean and had been removed of his gear, she sat on the stool beneath the window, where light was beginning to brighten the sky, and laid her head against the wall.

"Sleep," she whispered.

He could not bring himself to argue, and lay his head down. She took the cloth and the needle she had stuck in it up from the table, which he had not noticed her carrying, and, by the light of the window, began her work again, the small frown returning to her lips.

The bedding and the pillow held her scent. He lay watching her, her cheek limned by the faint light of the window, and he felt sleep catching up to him, pulling him down. His eyes closed slowly, and the last thing he saw was her look when she thought he had already fallen asleep, a look that pierced him through and left him no choice at all.


	15. Chapter 15

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

He woke slowly, pulled reluctantly from the deepest, darkest sleep he had ever known; a sleep strange to him, for he was used to waking at a moment's notice, at the softest whisper or the slightest brush of leaves. He had always slept lightly, as a boy and as a man, waking at every noise and tremor, at distinct odds with his brother, who slept as if he were dead whether at home in his own bed or on his feet in full armor in the field.

The bed was too small for him, and he was confused by the straw that scratched at his back. Sitting up, he found himself stiff, unused to such cramped quarters, and half-dressed. Then he remembered, remembered everything of the night and the morning before, and he felt his heart swell in his chest.

He examined the room now with eyes undimmed by exhaustion. The table was clear, with nothing on it but a clean, empty bowl, and the trunk, he saw, was sturdy, iron-bound. His boots sat beside the bed. The bedding was good linen, the straw fresh and new, and on a hook behind the door hung a gray cloak he recognized. Elsewhere the room was bare, the walls uncovered, the floor naked wood, and the window not glass, as he was used to seeing, but oiled paper, though new. The darkening light that painted the parchment red and brown showed him that it was becoming late, and he thought briefly of how he must have been missed at his duties the whole day.

He had only just pulled on his boots when the door opened and Anne came in.

She wore her white cap, but had changed from her brown dress. Now she wore a dark green tunic, the sleeves tight at the shoulder and along the upper arm and loose at her wrists. A surcoat, dark brown and plain, was caught low on her hips by the leaf-worked belt he had seen her wearing before, the sleeves only coming to her elbow. Soft leather shoes covered her feet, and in her hands was a pitcher.

Wood shades, he thought, the colors of a ranger. The colors he always wore.

She smiled, and poured water into the bowl on the trestle. He washed his hands and face, extremely conscious of her watching him, and when he reached for the cloth she carried, she did not give it to him but used it to dry his hands and face, touching him carefully, with such gentleness as no one had ever touched him with before, not even his childhood nurse. He kept himself very still, hardly able to look at her for how much he wanted to take her into his arms, and when he felt a finger slip beneath the collar of his shirt and onto his skin, he felt his knees go weak

She was tracing the shape of a scar he had on his shoulder, just below the bone at the base of his neck. A glancing arrow had done that, he remembered, and the pain had been persistent and irritating for weeks after, the scar the result of three long days without proper care. That it had not become infected and killed him had been sheer chance, and, he sometimes thought in his darker moods, a source of constant disappointment to his father.

"An arrow," was all he said of it, and she traced it again with the tip of her finger before taking her hand away. She stood very close, nearly touching him at hip and breast. He watched as she reached for her own collar, his mouth opening as she pulled it slightly down and exposed her own neck to him.

The scars he saw in the crook of her neck were like nothing he had ever seen before. He could see that they were too ragged to be made by a knife or a sword, yet too sharply and cleanly cut to be the work of an arrow. They looked more like bite marks, as though teeth had sunk into her flesh there and worried at it like a dog at a bone, and the thought of a beast, some fanged creature, catching her small, fragile neck in its mouth and gnawing at her flesh made his own both recoil in horror and grow hot with unwonted rage and an overwhelming urge to protect her from something so cruelly painful. The hiss that came from between his teeth made him wince.

At the same time, he could not help but think of how a woman, a girl, like Anne could come by such a scar, something that not even he, a frequent campaigner, had ever seen before, and the thought came to him again that he knew how, that the answer was simple and obvious, but he would not raise that question again, not so soon after what had happened. She would tell him, he knew, if not sooner, then later, and he would not press her. He had already gone beyond the point of returning, had made his decision and acted irrevocably, and so it would not matter much, anyway, what the answer was.

And then she smiled, nearly grinned, and traced a line along her stomach with the tip of her finger, a line that went straight up and down about the width of a wide blade, and he said disbelievingly, "Now you are teasing me,"but she only shrugged and laughed a low, lovely laugh that made him both want to pull her into his lap and ashamed that he would think of such a thing.

She helped him dress, blithely ignoring his half-hearted objections that he was neither an invalid nor an old man, and gathered up the gray cloak and the pitcher before going to the door. He looked back once, at the small garret that was her own home, and promised himself that he would see it again, but by a different name, before following her down the stairs.

The hall was not empty, the old man of the night before sitting on a bench near the fire. His white head lifted at their coming, and his smile for Anne was that of a father. And so, it seemed, was the look he gave the man following her.

She went to the door he had not been through before, and went in with a shake of her head for him to wait. He stood at the foot of the stairs, suddenly awkward with the old man as he had never been with anyone before, and the silence between them was hardly broken by the crackle of the fire in the hearth.

The old man was aged but not decrepit, with hair like an unshorn lamb's and the shoulders of a blacksmith who no longer swung a hammer. He was missing a leg, and a crutch leaned against the wall beside him.

"Good night to you," he said quietly, having nothing else to say.

"To you, my lord," said the old man, and glanced at him like a bird turning its head to follow the hawk. Their eyes did not meet, and the old man dropped his again so quickly it seemed as if it had not happened.

But he had felt the grudge in that resentful look, and his own pride reared its head. "If you would speak of something to me, then speak it. I'll not strike an old man."

"I have nothing to speak of," said the old man, quietly but sharply, "only a passing regret for a lady who might have had more."

Then neither said anything, both shocked by his audacity, his hostility, and how carelessly he had shown it. Something like fear shivered through the old man's hands.

He looked away from the old man, then, looking about the room and listening for Anne. He could not think how to answer the accusation, for it was true that he had that morning allowed a young girl to undress him and then slept in her bed, all without any spoken intentions or proper conduct. Too, he was unused to allowing peasants, freemen or serfs, to speak to him in such a manner, yet it was her home and her people and they had more right to be there than he.

"You speak above your place," he said finally, "and you do me a disservice. I own that I do not deserve her, but I should like to think I might be worthier than most."

Now the old man's eyes grew wroth, and he seemed to forget entirely that he spoke to a lord. "Do you come here then as a petitioner or as a man who keeps her from a good marriage without intending it himself? She refused him for you."

"What?" He hesitated. "I do not..."

"A good marriage," the old man repeated, a fire in his eyes. "We all would have been happy to see her wed him, if only she had been able to forget you, and now things have become hard for her, the loss of her reputation besides."

He felt something like a blow in his stomach, and he stared at the old man in silence. The old man held his gaze for a moment longer before he remembered to whom he spoke, and then dropped his eyes.

They stayed like that, he watching the old man and the old man watching the rush-covered floor. He felt the obvious question close on his tongue, and would have asked it had Anne not come back.

She was laughing, calling over her shoulder into the kitchen as she left it, and when she turned, he felt as though nothing else existed but the green of her eyes as she looked at him. She spoke to the old man, called him Grandfather and told him not to wait for her to eat, and then she came to take his hand.

He gave it to her, and she led him out.


	16. Chapter 16

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

They made their way from the street of blacksmiths to the Gates, walking slowly through such crowds as Minas Tirith hosted only in the spring of the year, at the time of the Fair of Tuile. All the lamps of the city had been lit early, so that the lamplighters walked the city while the sun still westered and would have to walk it again late that night. Song and laughter filled the thoroughfares and alleys, so that even the beggars and porters lingering in doorways could hear the lays of a thousand years being sung. The city had been hung with banners on every roof, and so many smaller lanterns stood in windows or hung from walls and the sides of homes that the city shown with yellow light.

The grounds outside of the city that had been earmarked for the fair were now a small town of wood, canvas, and unhitched wains. Here the lamps hung from poles at spaces, and there were also the fires and lights of the big halls and guesthouses that stood there from year to year, waiting for the fairs, so that to leave the city and walk among the stalls and booths and tents was like walking through a village, except that here the people were not peasants or farmers, but craftsmen and merchants, and wandering among them singers, dancers, porters, inspectors, prostitutes, and foreigners.

Anne walked through the crowd as confidently as if she knew where she wanted to go, and he followed closely, no longer embarrassed by how she held his hand to pull him with her, the touch of her small hand in his as natural and right as if this had always been so. His eyes were drawn to the collar of her tunic, which was now properly turned up and closed, and he thought to himself, _I know how the curve of her neck meets the bones of her shoulder there, the scar where she was hurt,_ and then he looked at her belt, where it rode low on her hips and caught the folds of her wood-brown surcoat, and he thought, _I have put my hands there, felt the slopes of her waist in my palms, _and he thought that these were things that he wanted to deny to any other.

The stall that she took him to was a small one that was on the edge of the fair, in a widely-spaced group of booths that were made mostly of smiths and those craftsmen whose work came from smiths. There he saw blades displayed, here hilts, and there a maker of scabbards showing his wares, and all had made their stalls as big and eye-catching as they could, the work of a long winter set out for buyers to see.

A youth stood in the stall they came to, a boy growing into a man's shoulders, and he wore a thick leather apron. His clothes were new and clean, his hair freshly cut and washed, and he grinned to see Anne, an expression that faltered and faded when he saw whom she brought.

"Tam," she said as they approached, and slipped her hand from his to gesture. "Damrod. Damrod, Tam."

Tam's face was thin and his frame lean. He thought that he knew where Anne had found Tam, and nodded to him. The boy bowed low, nervous, and was only distracted when Anne pulled him aside to speak quietly.

The stall was a modest one. He saw three whole swords, all of them black-hilted and black-sheathed, and there too were five finished blades which had yet to be hilted or sheathed. All of these were long swords, to be wielded in one hand, but on a table were two short swords, wrapped in sheepskin and leather. On a piece of leather were three ax heads, and these were axes made for war, double-bladed and heavy, only the hafts left to be attached, and with them was a large knife of a strange shape and thick handle.

He thought of the sword he had on his hip, and closed his hand about the hilt.

He was not a bladesmith nor an armorer, and so could not have said much about how such things were made, for he was more familiar with a bow and the leathers of woodsmen. But he thought of Anne's small hands, of the fragile shapes of her neck and shoulders, of how she looked as if she could hardly lift a broom, much less a sword or the hammer to make one. He counted the days since she had gotten the golden arrow, and it was impossible that anything could have been made in such a short length of time, therefore he thought that the only explanation was that she had been at this for far longer, perhaps since before she had met him.

He looked back, and Anne was now standing beside him. The light in her eyes and face made his breath catch.

"Damrod," she whispered. "I have five...commissions. Commissions? I have three swords and two daggers...to make. Everything – everything is – sold! I am working! I am making money! I have – I have my own – my own forge!"

She spoke Westron now very well, with an accent that always became more pronounced when she was excited or in a hurry. It was not unattractive, and very unusual, and though her speech was still awkward, she used it more easily every day.

"I am glad for you," he whispered, and she laughed openly, her head back and her mouth open, as a man did, but her laugh was that of a young, lovely girl's, and her teeth were the most white and perfect he had ever seen.

A woman who made swords and sold them for her own at a fair. He had never heard of such a thing, but he had never heard of a girl bearing arms but in stories and songs.

Anne turned away then to speak to a boy who had just run up to her, a smaller boy in a new surcoat who looked very much like Tam, and he was left standing there. Tam had lowered his head, busying himself with a rag, and he watched a while until he was sure Anne could not hear.

"When they come," he whispered, "what is it you say?"

Tam glanced at him, then at Anne.

He waited.

Tam's answer was grudging, but honest. "I say that my master is not here, but the blades speak for themselves."

He smiled for the boy, and the boy returned it shyly. Not a liar, then, but tactfully practical, and protective of his mistress.

"Tell me," he began carefully, "how you came into her service."

"In the street, my lord," said Tam, and he said it without any bitterness, boldly, with his eyes up, unashamed. "Our mother died of sickness, our father of a broken neck when he fell from the scaffolding. He was a glasswright, but I was too young to learn it, and we had no family to go to. My brother and I begged, and I worked where I could, but this winter was bad, and we would have starved in the cold had Anne not found us on a doorstep last Narwain. She took us and fed us, and now she says I may be her apprentice in the shop and have my own someday."

Tam said this last proudly, and the look he gave Anne where she stood talking to the child was of boyish adoration. He laughed a little, feeling very light-hearted, and teased the boy, "Have a care how you look at a woman. You do not know who is standing nearby."

But Tam looked at him again, and this time his eyes were troubled and suspicious. Then his gladness faded, and he regarded the boy without laughing.

"I have heard," he said quietly, "that she is not without suitors."

Tam's face flushed. "That would be her news to tell you. My lord," he added hastily.

He said nothing, then, but looked at Anne, who was telling the boy something the child was listening to very seriously. "I fear I have caused her pain," he murmured, "and she will not speak of it to spare me."

Neither said anything, until the child was turning to run off and Anne was beginning to turn toward them again. Then Tam whispered quickly under his breath, "Iorlas son of Belegond offered for her hand, and he was willing to take no dowry. She refused him, and this gave him such grief that his sister, the widow Rian, was forced to send her from the house."

Then Anne was beside him, and her happiness seemed to be a light that drove away all darker thoughts. He let her take his hand and pull him away, for she told him, "I want to see the horses," and he saw how Tam's eyes widened at how they touched, but he said nothing and let her do as she please. As they walked, he looked up to the heights of Minas Tirith, his beloved home, to the Citadel where it loomed over the White City, where he had been born and where he had thought he would die, and, at last, in the quietest, most secret places of his heart, he chose.


	17. Chapter 17

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The merchant business that traditionally took place the first day, the most important of which was the Cloth Market, had already done and closed with the setting of Anor. The scales and weights were put away, the notaries, inspectors, clerks, and the Steward's tax collectors retiring from their work for the night, and the sergeants put away their spears and took up their cudgels, the one hundred of them bolstered by three hundred peacekeepers, some of the hardier peasant men who wore white patches on their arms. Now the people of the streets came out, the bards, minstrels, and troubadours, the mummers, troupers, jugglers, tumblers, and dancers, and a number of capering fools. The taverns put out their dice and bones, the hostels put down their windows, and the crowds became full of women, painted and brightly clothed.

At the far edge of the fair, where the fields of the Pelennor stretched away into the shadows to where the Rammas Echor was a border of wide-spaced bonfires, he saw wagons and tents with the look of the Rohirrim. Horses, without tether or hobble, grazed nearby, a few fair-haired boys watching. Rohirrim always came to Tuile at Minas Tirith, bringing horses and goods to trade, and this year the herd was a large one. This first day of the fair, though the light was now only a pale glimmer in the west, many still stood near the camp, looking at the horses a tall, dark-haired man was walking back and forth.

Rohirrim wagons were particular in this, that they were more like small, wheeled houses that could be drawn like carriages, and he had heard that they were used as homes in some parts of the Wold, where the people followed their herds from place to place. The sides could be let down or a door opened in one end, and in this way the Rohirrim who lived in these showed their wares. He saw them every spring at Tuile, and the horses they brought for trade were much sought.

They walked slowly, she watching the different parts of the fair and he watching her. Not a few heads turned at her going, there was such a light in her eyes and face, and he thought that he had never seen her so bright. She looked about as if she had never seen a fair before, as if everything were new and unusual to her eyes, and he thought that perhaps she was not much used to cities, for he had seen that same look many times.

They stopped to watch a man who was throwing knives at a board, and it was impressive enough even for a lord who had been to fairs before. The knife-thrower was a young man, dark-haired and dark-skinned, charming despite his Southron look, and when he looked around the gathered faces for a volunteer, as these performers usually did, his eye came unerringly on Anne.

"Here is a pretty girl who is also brave," he said teasingly, and gestured for her to step forward. Anne laughed with the crowd, shook her head, but the knife-thrower saw her face as she turned it and seemed only more determined. "Please, lady, I get more if the girl is beautiful!"

He felt a frown working into his face, feeling as though the knife-thrower spoke more impertinently than even a performer at a fair should, but the crowd called for the "pretty girl" to step forward. It was a good crowd now, full of city people and foreigners alike, and he saw with some displeasure that a man, a Beorning, though not the one who had seen earlier that day, stood on her other side and urged her on, laughing in the loud way that Beornings had, and wagered a gold ring he wore on his arm that she would be too fearful to go before the knife-thrower. At this, her eyes shone and her jaw set and her back stiffened, and he knew she was about to do something foolish.

"Anne," he began, though he knew she would not listen, and the crowd shouted him down, calling her out. She turned and looked at him ruefully, as if to tell him _I won't make too much trouble,_ and went out before the board.

There was a cheer, and the knife-thrower bowed low and said, "My lady, you should be more careful, you nearly tripped in those stiff boots," and a knife flashed in the air and stuck with a dull thump into the board next to her ankle.

A gasp, but not from her. Anne looked barely down, not even a little startled and frightened, and the people gathered said approvingly that she was truly a brave girl.

"And those sleeves," said the knife-thrower, shaking his head as if he were a reproving mother, "they are too long for a child," and a gleam was all that warned of the blade that appeared at the left of her wrist, quivering in the wood.

A woman screamed in the back, but Anne only laughed, a lovely, airy laugh that made him swallow his heart back into his chest. She was not afraid, not nervous at all, and her nerve was such that the crowd cheered.

The Beorning who had wagered his arm ring had grown quiet. When he looked, he saw that the man was watching Anne very openly, and he thought to himself that he had heard that Beornings praised courage above all other things, and he felt his impatience rise in him like a hawk straining at her jesses.

Now the knife-thrower was staring at her differently, and his voice had grown softer. "My lady, you are too young to go with your hair covered. Why would you be so cruel?"

Anne's eyes then grew narrow, and she looked at him not playfully or provokingly, as she had been, but as if she would warn him. The Southron grinned, white teeth in a dark face, and a knife came up.

He tensed, began to move forward, to stop the brat and take her away from such a show –

The knife left the Southron's hand, a glitter of polished metal –

– and Anne seemed to sway forward, her arm falling to the waist like a lowering wing, and in her hand was the knife.

He felt the silence more than he heard it, the gasp as those gathered fell silent. The Southron's eyes were wide, and he seemed to tremble.

Anne straightened, tossing the blade as if it were a stick or a toy in the air and catching it again by the hilt. "Scared?" she asked, and her accent was lost in the taunting tone of the word.

The Southron's eyes filled with fire, and he laughed harshly, a different sound from his earlier teases. "Of a woman?" he cried, and the thought seemed to anger him so that, in the space of a heartbeat, another knife was in his hand and he threw it so hard that it seemed to hiss as it shot like an arrow at the board below her elbow.

Her arm swept out, and the two knives met with a ringing of steel. The knife that had been thrown stuck point-first into the ground in front of her, buried nearly to the hilt.

Silence came over the crowd, such a silence that others who had not been watching turned to look. Now fear did show itself in the Southron's face, and he threw another with less skill. A gleam, another chime of metal, and a second knife stood in the ground beside the first.

And then Anne drew back her hand and threw her knife.

Several screams pierced the air, and there were cries of alarm. He felt the blood drain from his face, and the Beorning himself shouted loudly.

The Southron stood, pale and sweating, and looked down at the hilt that protruded from his side. He stared at it, as did all the crowd, and he did not fall over dead or begin to bleed or even cry out in pain, but slowly removed his shirt. Then it was seen that beneath the shirt he wore a broad belt on his chest, with many small pockets to hold his hidden knives, and the one she had thrown was slid neatly into one of them, so that she had not cut him or stabbed him, but only returned his knife to him.

While they still stared at the Southron, his shirt gaping to expose the belt, he moved quietly to seize her arm, and when all eyes turned back to stare at her, they were already nearly lost in the crowd. A clamor began, as necks stretched and the crowd that had been watching the show turned to look for her, but he kept her close and shielded her from view with his own much larger body, so that they soon left the watchers behind. Anne let him pull her, very quiet, and when he slowed their pace and looked at her, she looked, in fact, very embarrassed.

"I'm sorry, Damrod," she whispered. "I...sometimes, I...I don't _think_."

He could not think of what to say. "That was very foolish."

Her cheeks flushed, but she said nothing else, and he let go her arm and they walked side-by-side, she very downcast and he silent and watching.

They had gone farther from the Gates, and were now close to the Rohirrim camp. The last buyers were gone, and a minstrel's singing accompanied the fire and the mead. A lonely horn faded in the distance, the Rohirrim calling the night to each other, and only the sellers of food and drink were left.

As they passed by, listening to the noise of dancing and music from the other side of the fair where the lights still shone brightly, he saw a door to one of the wagons open, and three people came out of it. Two were young men, one fair and one dark, and the third a woman, also fair. They were only a little way from where Anne and he were passing by, and he saw that they were talking hurriedly with each other. They were well-dressed, the two men carrying swords, and the woman was one he would have said was the loveliest he had ever seen, had he seen her only a few weeks before. Their hair was worn long and loose, as was the fashion in Rohan, and she wore a dagger on her belt.

Then the dark-haired man turned, so that the light of a nearby torch shone in his face, and he recognized it as that of Theodred, the prince of Rohan, who had once come to Minas Tirith as Theoden King's consul.

His breath caught, and he immediately put his hand to Anne's elbow and turned her with him, moving slowly and without hurry to avoid attention. She glanced at him, confused, but followed his lead, and soon they were a distance from the camp of the Rohirrim and moving steadily toward the Gates.

Theodred, here, in Minas Tirith. _They're supposed to be looking for a shieldmaiden,_ Mablung had said, and now they were here, and without announcing themselves, as they should have. He had not heard that the prince of Rohan had been on his way to the White City or even in Gondor, and, too, he had come only as a well-dressed noble rather than as a prince with his retinue, in secrecy.

Anne was beginning to smile again, and made as if she wanted to stop to look at a booth that sold girl's ribbons and caps and other things that he could not have named. He stopped with her, half-inclined to buy something for her if she should like it enough, and looked warily back the way he had come.

They were only a short distance away, walking but walking quickly, and their eyes were fixed on him and Anne. The woman's face was as set and determined as the two men's, and he saw that they had their hands on the hilts of their blades.

He turned away as if he had only been looking around at the jugglers. Anne was shaking her head at something the owner of the stall was saying, but then he slipped his hand against her waist, beneath her cloak so that others could not see, and pulled her almost bodily away. She took a quick, startled breath, for he had not before touched her so in public, but went with him when he began to walk quickly away, despite the ribbon-maker's protests.

He did not look back, and only whispered, "Wait!" when Anne asked him, "What?" He cut through a crowd where a family of singers and dancers were performing, and risked a glance as they turned to avoid a brawl spilling out of a wineshop. The two fair-haired Rohirrim had been caught up by the crowd and then the brawl, he stopping to shield the woman, but Theodred was just behind them, shoving his way through the fight with the careless violence that the people of Rohan were known for.

The Gates were in front of them, not very crowded for being a late hour. He threw back his cloak to let the guards see his leather harness, which showed him to be a Ranger, and they let him by without questioning, for most of the shifts knew his gear. A loud "Halt!" and a guttural curse in an unfamiliar tongue told him that the guards had stopped Theodred.

"Damrod," Anne was saying. "Damrod, what?"

He said nothing for a few strides, feeling as though he had just escaped a disaster. He looked at Anne, and saw that she was pink with temper at being ignored, and he thought again and rather pathetically that she was the loveliest thing he had ever seen.

"We are late," he told her.

She hesitated. "Late?"

"Very late," he said, and began walking again, now holding her by the hand. "We must hurry."

She clearly did not understand, but followed him anyway, and he saw her repeat his words silently to herself, as if doubting she had translated them right the first time.

The walk was a long one, and as they went higher into the city the streets grew larger and emptier. Here the people were wealthy burghers and the nobility, and these houses were large, grand places where the lights burned all the night and the sound of music came from inside rather than out. Carriages and servants lined the walls of the houses, some looking curiously after the two as they went by. The Steward did not celebrate Tuile as he had once, he knew, and so the highborn would be hosting their own balls and suppers. He himself had been invited to not a few, but had declined them all, as he always did.

They passed through the dark, lamp-lit tunnels of the east-thrusting promontory of the Hill of Guard several times, and Anne watched everything going by as if she had never been so far into the city. The guards they passed now and again did not stop or question them, for he wore his Ranger gear openly, though they did look often at the girl he pulled with him. A few even recognized him, and he heard them nudging their fellows and whispering after he had passed, and he thought with some dread of the talk that would have spread throughout the city by the next morning. Yet it was too late to turn back or do things more circumspectly, for the coming of Theodred to Minas Tirith had shown him that he no longer had time for caution.

The sixth gate was guarded more heavily, and he only got by without questions for the reason that the captain on duty that night knew him and let him pass without asking more than the watchword. Here there were many more guards, some whom he knew, and they all seemed to stare at the girl he brought with him by the light of the torches. Anne's cloak was closed, and she kept her eyes down, stricken suddenly shy, and more than a few men looked significantly at each other as they stood aside.

That part of the city was nearly empty at that hour, and Anne walked closer to him as they followed the street. Her hand in his felt smaller than it ever had before, and when she whispered softly, "Damrod?" he thought to himself that even Anne was not beyond fear.

He stopped, then, when the gate he wanted stood only a ways before them, and he felt the stilness of the sleeping city, his city, cooling the madness that had driven him there. He looked back at her, standing a step or so behind him, her hand in his between them, as if she tried to decide which way to go – back, the way she had come, or forward, where he was pulling her.

"Do you love me?" he asked quietly.

Her face was white, and she trembled briefly. "Yes," she said as quietly, and her answer hung between them, and he felt as if he had gotten something from her irrevocably, that could no longer be ignored or taken back.

He turned then, and led her on, and she neither hesitated nor was afraid. And so they came to the eighth gate of Minas Tirith, the gate known as the Closed Door, which led to Rath Dinen.


	18. Chapter 18

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The porter was a man white and withered small, who had lived in his house beside the Closed Door for too many years of his life. A lantern stood by him, as weary with use as the palsied hand that carried it, and he could not remember a time when this old man had not been in his house guarding the way into the Hallows, and it seemed to him that the old man had been old even when he himself had been young, and the lantern and his key the same now as it had been many years before.

The old man watched him approach, and he seemed to look at Anne more than he looked at him. She returned his look with one of her own, and they all three stood for a while, without talking, in darkness but for the light of stars and one small lantern, and it seemed to him that the porter guessed at everything that was happening before he could tell it.

"My lord," said the old man, and even his voice was the same creaking whisper that it had been for thirty years. He said what it was his duty to say. "My lord, I cannot let you pass."

And he, in turn, said to the gatekeeper the thing he knew he had to, to get from him the key. "If ever you bore any love for me, or for my mother before me, let me pass."

The porter closed his eyes, and he felt that he had hurt the old man more than he had thought he would by making such a claim. But the old man sighed, a long and mournful sigh that told him he had prevailed, and lifted the key in a withered hand.

"For your sake, and your mother's," said the porter. "Were I still young and strong, I would deny you this, and say that it was for your sake and your mother's, but I am old, and you are no longer the boy who came to see me for my stories. So for love take this key, and for love never ask this of me again."

The key was cold to touch, and large and made of metal pitted with use and age, but it unlocked the Fen Hollin as silently as if it were new and oiled. The door swung open without a noise, and the tunnel was deep and dark before them.

"I will not give you my light," said the old man. "Rather I will blow it out, and wait blind while my duty goes undone and my vows are broken. Go forward, if that is what you will, but I will not light your way."

The lantern went out with a single breath, and then they all stood in a black night that seemed to swallow all sound and light. He heard Anne's breathing go utterly silent for the briefest moment, and then return in a short, soft exhalation.

"Let this not be your great sorrow," the porter whispered, and his age-broken voice seemed as loud as a clarion call, "as I fear it will be, an anguish unendurable, and without release."

Then the porter said no more, but sat so still that he seemed made of the same stone as his house, and he turned to look at the opened door. His eyes, used to the shadows and half-light of the woods and the tunnel-ways of Minas Tirith, a city of stone, could see well enough in the faint light of stars and moon, but the passageway beyond the threshold of Fen Hollin was as black and fathomless as no Man-hewn hall or Orc's cave he had ever seen. He felt the darkness as if it were a wall he had to go through, and though he did not fear the dark, the road was steep and climbing when going with torches. Still, he would not turn back.

The air inside the tunnel was cold and flat. They walked in an eerie silence he had never known, the silence of a place that was neither a city nor a wood, where they were the only two people in a closed place of stone. Anne was a ghost beside him, walking and breathing so quietly that he could not hear her step or breath, and hardly the noise of her clothes brushing together and against her skin. The only way he knew that she was still there, that he was not alone in the passage between Fen Hollin and the Hallows, was her hand in his, her fingers clutching at his.

They went on for only a short distance before suddenly her hand pulled at his, and he stopped. Anne's other hand came to his arm, taking his wrist, and she lifted his arm out in front of him and, without any uncertainty, placed his hand on the chilled surface of stone.

The balustrade, he realized, and he remembered now that the road went down the slope of the Hill of Guard between the walls and the carved palings.

He turned to look at Anne unthinkingly, but she was barely a shape in the dark against the faint light that came through the open door behind them. Only now did he feel through her hand and arm her relaxed balance, the easy sway of her body as she turned here and there to look around her, and it came to him that she could see as clearly there in that utter lightlessness as he could not.

"Anne," he whispered, and he felt her look at him. "Can you see?"

She hesitated, and then her voice came quietly, warily, "Yes."

"Well," he said, "why am I stumbling about in front?"

Her touch softened, and she took his hand in both of hers in a way that felt as if she had thrown her arms about him.

They walked more quickly, he with a hand held out to touch the balusters as they went and the other holding hers. She moved as he thought cats moved in the dark, all grace and certainty, and in this way they passed down the road from the Closed Door to where the tunnel gave way to open air and the light of Ithil shone white in Rath Dinen.

"Damrod," whispered Anne, and she was craning her neck to look up through the shadow of the mountain and at the stars, which glittered across the sky like silver dust. "Damrod, where are we?"

"The Silent Street," he said. "The burial grounds of the lords of Minas Tirith, and the resting place of Kings and Stewards."

He had not relinquished her hand when they had come out of the tunnel, and she pulled him with her as she went down the street. The expression on her face was strange to him, as if she were both repulsed and drawn by what she saw, as if she looked on something both familiar and unknown. Halfway down, he stopped her.

"There," he told her, and showed her the largest of the houses on the Street of Silence. "That is the House of Kings, where the past Kings of Minas Tirith are laid in death. And there, that is the House of Stewards – "

"Where Stewards sleep," she finished, and looked at him.

"Yes," he said quietly, "but we want a smaller house."

The tomb he showed her to was neither as grand nor as large as any of the others, and was also older than many, with a smaller dome. There were no images of the dead here, only bare walls and a door, and he felt the distant emptiness that he always felt when he thought of this door, and the last time he had seen it.

It opened at a touch, and he led her into a vaulted chamber that was as austere as the bare walls outside. The light of the moon was here a silver glow, so that they could see as well as if by torchlight. The rows of tables that filled the room were smaller than in other tombs, made of stone rather than marble, but the shrouded forms lying on each surface was as it was in all the other Houses of the Dead. He led Anne to the one he knew, the one he had seen in his dreams all his life, and it was smaller than he remembered it being.

They stood before it, her hand in his, and he turned to her to find her looking at him.

She was small, smaller than any other woman he had ever seen, and her loveliness ate at him like a hunger, the longing for her voice like a thirst. Yet what he saw most clearly was the courage and the kindness that she carried in her like a cup overflowing, and the sadness hidden so far beneath her skin that it seemed to mirror that emptiness he felt in himself, as if in her he had found someone who understood his loneliness, as he understood hers.

"Do you love me?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, and she said it simply, without thought.

"And do you know that I love you," he said, "as I have since the first day I saw you?"

"Yes," she said.

He looked down at the table, at the foot of it where it was covered with dust, and he swept his hand over it to expose the naked stone beneath. There, glinting in the soft light, were two trees shown standing close together, branches entwined, cut into the very rock, and every line seemed to speak of unbearable grief.

He turned to her again, and their faces were so close together that when he spoke, his lips brushed her skin. "Before the trees, I tell you that I love you, and will marry you, and I will make you my wife in the eyes of all the world."

He felt her trembling, felt her breath catch and her begin to pull away, but he would not let go and soon she stilled and came near him again.

Then, she spoke, and what she said was in her own language, the harsh sound of her mother tongue gentled and made lovely by the light in her face and eyes, and then she said to him, simply and gravely, "I love you, and will marry you, and I will have no one else as my husband."

"Now we are plighted," he said, "and it is witnessed here, by all those gathered. Nothing will keep me from you, I swear it."

The tomb seemed now to be full of light, as it had never been before in memory or in dreams, and by that light he touched his fingers to the edges of her white head cloth. There he hesitated, disbelief warring with want, so used to her cap he had become, though now it was his right.

Her own hands were small and warm against his, and she pressed his hands to her skin and slid them back, so that his fingers brushed her forehead and pushed the white cloth before it. Beneath his hands, he saw the glint of gold, and the cap dropped unnoticed to the ground.

Her hair spilled out from beneath the cap like a fall of light, and her hair was long and gold, true gold that shone like yellow never could, and he saw now as if he had never seen it before that her skin was a paler shade of what glimmered on her head, so that she seemed a woman wrought from that metal which Men desired most, and his hands were full of the sun.

His hands were shaking, and he ran his fingers through her hair as he had ached to do for so long. Nothing else existed, nothing but her, and when he put his arms around her and pulled her to him, he did it for the first time as his right.

"Anne," he said suddenly, and straightened to look at her. "Anne, my name..."

She pulled away, and he was distracted by the sight of her with her hair on her shoulders, Anor-golden.

"Anne," he said, and his voice grew quiet. "My name is not Damrod."

She laughed, the laugh he loved more than anything, and she whispered to him, "My name isn't Anne."

He laughed, then, a laugh louder and more carefree than he had ever laughed in his life, a laugh that filled the small tomb, and brushed a lock from her cheek. "What is it?"

He almost did not see the way her eyes darkened, the way sadness seemed to rise up within her happiness like a wave against the shore, but then it was gone and she was telling him, "My name is Buffy."

"Buffy," he tried saying, and he found he liked the shape of it on his tongue. "Buffy."

"Buffy Anne Summers," she said, and by the way she said it, the way she hung back and then lingered, he knew this was not a small thing she had given him, her three names.

"Buffy," he said softly, and took her hand. Pulling her close, he turned to face the table and the sleeping form, the golden-haired girl at his side.

"Mother," he said, "she is Buffy, and she is my wife."


	19. Chapter 19

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The house on the street of blacksmiths was dark by the light of morning, and they stood in a window to watch Anor rise.

They had walked without haste when they left Rath Dinen, and the porter had taken back his key and only stared at Anne with wide eyes. It was so at all of the gates they went back through to take her home, that the guards who had seen them go up now gaped at them coming down, at her with her hair uncovered and shining for all to see. And he did not mind, for they had plighted their troth in the most sacred place in all the world, and he knew that she was his and his alone.

It was the day after Tuile, the second day of the fair, and he knew that he had to go back into the Citadel, for he would have been missed an entire day, and there would be trouble. Still he lingered in the hall of her house, trying to find it in himself to go away from there and see to his duties, until, at last, only the thought of Mablung being forced to report the disappearance to their lord made him walk away, and even then he looked back more often than he should have, to catch glimpses of her in the window as he walked down the street.

The city was quieter than the day before, though still as full, for Tuile was the first day of the Spring Fair and it was always the most tumultuous day of the entire celebration, with all the great markets and all the most striking of the ceremonies and spectacles, and he had missed all of these things and more, though some of them had been his duty to attend, for he had not, in his madness of the morning and the night, cared to think about anything but the girl. The streets as crowded as they had been, though not so much as they were in years before, when the Shadow in the East had not been quite as long or as dark, and the lamplighters went about dousing those lights that still burned and repairing those lamps that had been broken in the rogueries of the night of Tuile, and the sweepers of the streets went to clearing the debris and rubbish that had been accumulated, which also involved directing the foreigners who had become lost and waking those who lay in a drunken stupor in public places, which would normally have meant a fine.

He walked quickly, nearly at a march, feeling as though things that had been forgotten in a rush were now beginning to catch up with him, and he knew he had been foolish. There would be harsh talk when he returned, though he suspected they would not be too put out with him, for nothing he had neglected the day before had been of particular importance, but things he might have arranged for another to do if he had not felt like it. Yet it was not his way to be careless with his duties, however small, and he could not help feeling somewhat shamed at his own behavior, even if it was nothing his brother had not done many times before at whim, to disregard the little matters that he did not care for, but this did not help him feel better, and in fact made him feel worse.

He would have to speak to his brother of everything that had happened, he knew, for to do what he was preparing to do next was no easy thing. His brother's support would be crucial, and he counted on this to help him. He thought of introducing the two of them, his bride and his brother, and he smiled to think of the look on his brother's face, for there had always been teasing between them that he was a quiet, grim man with no interest in things like dancing and compliments and pretty faces, whereas his brother had always been popular with the daughters of courtiers and the maids, a soldier who liked to talk and to laugh.

He had always assumed that his brother would marry first, for he was the older and the one their father expected to sire sons to carry on their line, and was preferred by most women besides, but, too, neither of them had ever spoken of this, at least to each other. They had always had too many other things to do, and he himself had never thought of marrying until he had seen Buffy. He had known women before, and had had offers made to him, but he had never seriously considered any of them and resigned himself to accepting whatever girl his father cared to match him with when the time came. Now, looking back, he felt as if he had never married or formed any attachments for one reason, and one reason only, and this was that he had been waiting, all along, for Buffy.

Buffy. Anne. Buffy Anne Summers. These were strange names, but they were hers, and perhaps she came of a highborn family after all, to have three names all at once, when even ruling Kings usually had only two names at the same time. He did not put much confidence in this, however, and anyway it did not make a difference, for she would be his wife, commoner or noble or shieldmaiden, for he had vowed this would be so, and no man broke such a vow made in such a place, much less he.

He thought of these things as he walked, but mostly he thought of Buffy, her small form and her shining hair, and he imagined her in his house, her hair on her shoulders, and it seemed to him as if he were seeing it in a vision or a dream, that she was looking at him as he came into a room, and by the light of a fire laid in the hearth he saw that she was big with child, his child, and he went to her and laid his hand over the head of his unborn son.

And then he returned to himself, and realized he had made his way to the top of Minas Tirith with these thoughts, and had not noticed that the streets had grown more crowded as he went instead of less, that the banners of the White City had been raised above him, and the vision slipped from him and was forgotten as he was distracted.

Approaching the seventh gate, he saw that a crowd had gathered and was blocking the way, and as he neared, a horn blew long over the roofs, and a man on a horse went galloping by him and down into the city. He pushed forward, and the people gave way when they saw who it was. The Tunnel-Way had been opened wide, he saw, and a page in the livery of the Steward was just now running back up the road to the Citadel.

The guards saw him as he came to the front, and called the news to him as though they could not wait. "Riders approach! The Horn of Gondor returns! Boromir has come home!"

At the same time, another horn sang in the distance, but this came from without the city, and so loud and so great was its cry that all who heard it who were Gondorian by birth knew from whence it came.

He felt his heart hammer at his chest, and such gladness filled him that he felt as if he were a different man. Boromir had returned.

The riders came tearing up the streets at a very reckless stride, and by this he knew that Boromir was as glad to be home as they were to see him come. They galloped their horses right up to the stables that stood beside the seventh gate, where already many had gathered to see the beloved son of Minas Tirith come home. When they slowed before the crowd, the rider in the front giving a last clarion call from the Horn of Gondor, a cheer went up from nearly a thousand mouths.

He had waited by the gate, the guards standing at attention behind him, and he was there to catch the bridle of the warhorse, there to return the cry of welcome, and he was the one to whom Boromir son of Denethor turned when he had dismounted, the one Boromir seized in his grasp.

"Boromir," he laughed, and laughed again at Boromir's expression, for he knew the man was not used to seeing him laugh, or respond so well when he was clasped in such a manner. "I am glad you are here. I have much to tell you."

"I, too," said Boromir, and he looked just the same as he always had, his dark hair perhaps longer and the stubble of long travel on his face. He grinned, and that was the only thing different about him, that there was a certain brightness about him that seemed much changed from before, as though he had discovered something unexpected and good while he was away, and it shone from him like a light. "Brother, I have much to tell you, too."

"But I will tell you my news first," he said, "and then I think your tidings will not be so exciting."

"We shall see," said Boromir, a mild answer for him, and his eyes were merry. "But do not count on it, Faramir, for I think you will be surprised enough at what I have to say."

And Faramir laughed, and embraced his brother.


	20. Chapter 20

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The door to the Tower Hall opened, and Boromir came out.

"At last," he sighed, and looked at Faramir. "How long?"

"Three hours."

"The man can talk," muttered Boromir, but grinned, then, and clapped his brother on the shoulder, pulling him along as he walked. "Come! If I don't wash soon, I may lose the habit."

They went by way of the halls, the paved and roofed passageways that went from place to place, and all the door-wardens and standing guards hailed them as they walked, their eyes drinking in the sight of Boromir son of Denethor.

The city was cold and gray with rain. By late morning, soon after Boromir had gone in to be closeted with the Steward, a storm had blown in from the west. Messengers had been running back and forth between the Citadel and the city, and it had been reported by the provosts that the lower streets were already ankle-deep in running water, though the drainage was clear. The Fair had been largely and hastily dismantled, the fair-guests allowed to retreat into the first and second quarters of the city. The foreigners' wagons and wains had all been pulled up to take shelter at the walls, and the herds moved west beyond the Rammas Echor, to higher ground on the outskirts of Lossarnach. The taverns and guesthouses of Minas Tirith were desperately crowded, and the bailiffs had already checked fighting in the second quarter of the city, where a quarrel between the master of a guesthouse and a Dwarf had nearly caused a riot. Faramir had ordered space be made for any Dwarves who would come in the Old Guesthouse; this had been the cause of the first violence, that a Man should ask a Dwarf to sleep on the floor for lack of beds. There had as yet been no murders, though a few thieves had been imprisoned and were to be branded.

All of these things had been meant for the Steward's attention, but he would not be disturbed while locked in with his son, and so they all had fallen to Faramir to deal with. He did not mind, for he wanted distraction from the things that worried at him. The Steward had not wanted him to come in with them, had told him to wait if he wanted. Boromir protested, but for nothing, leaving Faramir standing before the closed door in silence.

And beneath it all was how much, how badly he wanted to go and see her, though he had gone from her side that morning. He could not stop thinking of her as she had looked, her hair down her back, standing in the light of Rath Dinen.

For three hours he had listened, advised, and commanded, wanting her all the while, and now finally Boromir had come out of council with their father, and they would talk together.

The apartments given to Boromir son of Denethor were spacious, and they would have been lavishly done and fitted if he had been that kind of man. As it was, his rooms more often resembled an armory than a lord's chambers. Faramir was familiar with his brother's rooms, having spent much of his own childhood in them and then visiting often in his adolescence and adulthood. What he remembered most were the countless hours they had spent at maps and toy knights made of pewter and lead, talking boyishly of the things they would do when Boromir was the Steward Boromir II and he, Faramir, was his second-in-command, the Captain-General of Minas Tirith, and how happy they had been.

When they came in, a large tub had been brought up and filled with steaming water, a fire was laid in the hearth, and spiced wine, bread, and meat were set out on the table. The chamberlain and three blushing maids hurried out, asking if there was anything else the Steward's son might need, and then the brothers were alone together for the first time in nearly twenty months.

"A bath!" Boromir immediately stripped, placing his belt and sword and vambraces carefully on the table and flinging off everything else. A hiss of immense satisfaction accompanied his easing carefully into the water.

Faramir shook his head, laying his own things carefully in a chair and picking up Boromir's scattered clothes while he did. "I take it Father took your report well."

"Not in the least. You should have heard his tirade against the Elves. I honestly believe he thinks Lord Elrond is out to pull Minas Tirith down with his bare hands."

Faramir sat in a chair, picked out a dish of capons. "Was it for nothing, then?"

Boromir shook his head, looking for and finding the soap. A grin pulled at his mouth, and he even laughed a little, to himself. "No, Faramir. It was not for nothing."

They did not speak for a while, Boromir going about his bath, suddenly impatient to be out, and Faramir eating and watching the high windows, beyond to the sky black with clouds. There would be flooding in the poorer quarters, he thought, and remembered those hovels he had visited. He would inquire with the provosts, he decided. Perhaps the Steward's coffers could pay for a public refuge for those whose homes flooded.

Boromir dropped into the chair opposite Faramir, still damp, wearing a clean tunic, surcoat, and leggings. He sighed. "Well. I think I have survived after all."

His brother did look well, Faramir decided. His hair was longer, in need of cutting, his face perhaps carrying one or two more lines, but it was true that Boromir was now a man in his forties, and had not been a boy for some time, though it was hard to tell when he was especially excited about something. His nose looked different, slightly crooked as if it had been broken, but if it had then it had also been set so well it was barely noticeable. He had also, it seemed, gained some weight. Faramir resolved to twit him about it unmercifully, but later, when all the complicated things left to do were done.

Boromir was looking at him, and his eyes were questioning, almost perplexed, the way he used to look at the pages of Sindarin their tutor had put before him. He looked as if he did not quite believe what he was seeing, and Faramir wondered if he had changed so much in the time his brother had been gone that Boromir could no longer recognize him.

"Well, Faramir," he said quietly. "Here we are, back where it all began."

Faramir thought this a strange thing to say, and did not have a ready answer to it. He felt inexplicably self-conscious.

"Do you know," said Boromir abruptly, leaning back, "that Theodred and his cousins have gone missing from Rohan? I heard of it as I passed through."

Faramir tried not to show his discomfort. "You came by Rohan?" he asked, to buy time.

"With two others I met in Imladris."

A white luminance filled the windows. Thunder broke and cracked directly overhead, rattling glass and metal and making the candles flicker. Faramir thought to himself that it was a good thing Boromir had arrived when he did, ahead of the storm.

He glanced at his brother, and found him looking at the windows. His eyes were distant and dreaming, as lost in his own thoughts as if he were not sitting there at all but elsewhere, looking at something only he could see. His mouth, normally stern in repose, had gentled with a soft smile that Faramir had never seen before, a smile of such quite tenderness and affection that for a brief, breathless moment, he thought he was looking at his brother as he had been when they were youths in their twenties, a tall, broad-shouldered man with a boy's grin, big and good-looking and brash.

The moment passed, and then Boromir seemed to remember himself. He looked up, catching Faramir's expression. They laughed awkwardly, looking away from each other, and for some reason he felt that they were both embarrassed.

"Did you..." Faramir cleared his throat. "Did you find out anything? In Imladris?"

Boromir sat back, and, before Faramir's very eyes, he seemed to age again those twenty years.

"I did not find a Halfling," he said quietly, "nor Isildur's Bane. There was no council. The Elves...at the time..."

Faramir waited, but Boromir hesitated, and then shrugged.

"They have troubles of their own," he said, "none of which they would discuss with me. I spent my time asking questions they would not answer. They made me wait as if I were a leaseholder come to the lord to ask a boon and then said they knew nothing. The only thing I could get from Lord Elrond was that our dream was one that foretold what is to be, but that the time had not yet come for its fulfillment. Soon after that, his sons sickened, and he had no more time for me."

"His sons?"

Boromir shrugged again. "I did not know them well. From what I heard, they had been languishing for a while, growing weaker from what, they did not tell me. The morning of the day before my departure, they could not rise from their beds. Imladris is racked with grief. I offered whatever condolences and service I could give, and Lord Elrond told me I could do nothing. So I left."

"Mercy on the children of Elrond," said Faramir quietly.

"I know that it was not for nothing," said Boromir. "We simply have to keep a watch. The answers will come to us, I think, sooner than we would like. But what is this about Osgiliath?"

Now he felt something like shame like a stone in his stomach, but he did not shirk from his duty. "It has been lost, Boromir. I could not hold it."

Boromir stiffened, his eyes like flint, but then he exhaled loudly and met Faramir's look. "Father. He cut you off at the knees, did he? As soon as I left. He reduced the numbers of men and refused to give you any more supplies for the front."

Faramir said nothing.

"I know it." Boromir cursed, clenching his teeth. "I begged him to help you. I told him Osgiliath would need men to occupy it, workers to rebuild and steady supply lines. He said he would give you all you needed to do your duty. Father! His tongue should have been forked! Faramir, I should not have left!"

Faramir shook his head. "This was not anyone else's doing. To my shame, I could not hold the city you reclaimed for Gondor. But that is that, and I can atone for it by helping you in what you do next. The Orcs are numberless. Hordes such as we have not met before camp on the other shore of the Anduin, and they lay waste the land to the north. Mablung tells me that they are moving into Rohan. We must fight, but I fear Father will not do what must be done simply because I am the one to urge it. You must take it up, Boromir. He will give you anything."

"He has," said Boromir. "He wrote out the orders as I watched. The armies prepare to march even now."

For a moment, he could not speak. And then he laughed, a low, despairing laugh that was like a knife in the flesh. "You see? He will never change. Though Minas Tirith herself falls, he will deny me what he gives you unasked."

Boromir looked away, and his expression was even more painful.

The chamber was bitterly cold. Despite wall hangings, fur-covered chairs, and carpets, the floors and walls always chilled in rain or snow, and hurt to touch with bare skin in the worst winters. The fire burned hotly, but only on the side that faced it, so that Faramir felt as if his left arm scorched while his right grew numb.

"I need your help, Boro," he said quietly.

Boromir looked at him. "You have not called me that in many years," he said, his voice soft.

"I have never needed you to help me as much as I do now."

Boromir leaned forward, reaching for the wine to pour it. "Is this what you were talking about, the news you had for me?"

"Yes." He hesitated, and had to accept the goblet Boromir handed him. The wine had been hot, and trickled warmth down his throat. He tried to consider what to say, how to say it, but all he could think of was her eyes, her hair, the sound of her voice. He closed his eyes, remembered her standing beside the tomb of his mother and how she had looked at him. _I will have no one else as my husband._

He opened his eyes and looked at his brother.

"I have become plighted," he said. "Her name is Buffy, and she will be my wife."

The wine that sprayed from Boromir's mouth stained Faramir's surcoat with spots of dark red. He wiped his face with his sleeve while Boromir coughed, and then reached over to slap him on the back.

"Wife?" Boromir coughed again, swatting Faramir off. "You—you want to marry?"

"As soon as possible," said Faramir.

Boromir began to smile, but then his look became worried. "You haven't...? I mean to say, you have not, ah...been careless, have you, brother?"

"_Boromir_," said Faramir severely, almost but not quite scolding. "Simply because _you _have been known to sneak women into the Citadel under your cloak—"

"That was the once, and I was drunk." Boromir slammed his goblet down, now grinning. "Faramir! My little brother, married. In _love_."

"Quit that," he warned, but Boromir laughed, throwing his head back.

"You do not understand," he said. "You do not—Faramir! This is—no, let me tell you this. I told you I had news. Well..."

Now Boromir stood, as if he could not bear to be sitting any longer, and he walked to the window. There was such a light in his face, and he turned to look at Faramir with such a grin that he felt his uncertainty subdued by it.

"I saw her in Imladris," said Boromir. "The girl I shall marry."

He was so taken aback that he could at first say nothing. "Marry," he said at last. "A girl in Imladris? She—"

"A girl of our own race, brother," laughed Boromir. "I don't know that I could suffer an elven bride, or she me. No, this girl is as mortal as we are."

"And you—" He could not quite grasp this. "—would marry her?"

Boromir turned away, looked out the window into the storm. The fire had begun to burn itself out, and the room grew dark but for the candles on the table and the lightening that shone white every now and then. His hands were clasped behind him.

"I saw her but once," he said. "I believe she was sent to Imladris for healing. When we met, her injuries were terrible to see, though they were nearly gone, and, too, the Elves kept her as we would keep an invalid. I wish I had asked her name, but we were discovered before I could do more than lend her my cloak."

"You do not know her name?" said Faramir, a little disbelieving. "You do not know her name, where she is from, or who her people are?"

"I do not care," said Boromir. "Too, I did not have the chance. I found her while she was making her escape, and then we were discovered, as I said."

"Escape?"

"She was climbing out of a window at the time."

At that, Faramir laughed. "With a rope made from the bedclothes?"

"Bare-handed," said Boromir. "Bare-handed, bare-headed, and barefoot. I nearly had heart failure. I think she must have still been weak; her grip was not good, and she fell. I tried to catch her."

"And—?"

Boromir shrugged, his broad shoulders rising exaggeratedly and stretching his surcoat. When he turned, the grin he tried to hide was unexpectedly boyish. "Did you know that a broken nose is nearly as painful as being shot or stabbed?"

Faramir thumped the table and laughed, louder and longer, and Boromir laughed with him.

When they had gotten a hold of themselves, Boromir strode to the fire, throwing in more wood and taking up the iron to stir it up. "I tried to inquire of her. None of the Elves would talk to me! In fact, they avoided me, and became angry when I asked questions about the lady. I missed her completely. By the time I heard that she had left, she had been gone for a month. I borrowed a horse and scoured the near country, but I could not find anyone who had seen a lady and her retinue go by. I paid for riders to search the Great East Road and down the Bruinen, and still, nothing.

"I will have to find her by larger means. Heralds will have to be sent to the north. I do not think she was Gondorian or Rohirrim. Dale or Rhovanion will be more likely, and the coastal cities will have to be searched, as well as all the castles and towns. Still, I do not think I will have too much trouble. Those families old enough or knowledgeable enough to send a daughter to the Elves for healing will be few and far between. And, too, a girl like her would be much talked of in any place."

"But you do not know anything about her," said Faramir. "Say that you do find her, and she is married? Or betrothed elsewhere? Or else somehow unfit to be your bride?"

Boromir stood up, the fire now big and bright. He shook his head, and his expression was one that Faramir had seen many times before in his life. It was the look that meant nothing could be said or done to change his mind, now that he had made it up, and it was useless to try. He had worn that look for the first time nearly thirty years ago, when the Steward had wanted to send Faramir off to be fostered in the household of the lord protector of Andrast, as far away as a man could go while still in Gondor. At first, Boromir had been extremely jealous, saying that Faramir would get to go off and kill Woses while he himself had to stay at home and learn Elf-letters. But then he had realized that it also meant that his little brother was being sent so far away to live that it would be years before they saw each other again, possibly not until they were both grown, and then he had set his jaw, squared his shoulders, and put his foot down. Some of the servants still talked sometimes of the epic battle that had ensued between father and son. That had been the first time, and certainly not the last, that Denethor had given in and let his beloved son have his way.

Remembering this, Faramir felt his hope grow.

"I am sure she is not married," said Boromir stubbornly. "Or betrothed. And it is not possible that she should be unfit, especially if I say she is not. I will find her, Faramir, and when I have, nothing will stop me from claiming her as my wife. This is what I spoke to Father of, and he has promised me that I should do as I would in this."

"He supports you?" Faramir smiled. "I am not surprised. He has only been after you to marry for nearly twenty years, anyway."

"I barely stopped him from proclaiming the banns." Boromir looked exasperated, though satisfied. "My argument was that the bride should be found before the announcement is made. Be a bit embarrassing if the wedding comes around and I am up there by myself."

"If that happens, you may borrow mine," said Faramir generously. "She can stand as proxy for yours so that you do not look like a complete halfwit."

"What was her name—Buffy?" He came back to the table, sitting and pouring more wine. "I have not heard that name before. Who is she?"

Faramir took a breath. "She lives in the lower city. She has no family. She is a swordsmith."

He had said more awkwardly than he had wanted, and Boromir did not answer, but only finished pouring the wine and took up his goblet. His grin had faltered.

"A swordsmith," he said at last. "A girl who is a swordsmith. And a peasant."

"I do not believe her a peasant," said Faramir. "She—you know it when you speak to her, when you see her. She is not a peasant."

Boromir's silence said much.

"Faramir," he began.

"It is not possible that she should be unfit for me," said Faramir quietly, "especially if I say she is not."

For a few moments, neither said anything. The fire cracked as the wood broke in the heat, and the rain blotted the glass. Boromir was looking at him as if he were a stranger.

"Well," said Boromir softly. "Look at us, Fara. I, with my bride whose name and house I do not know, and you, with yours who is a peasant." He drank, put the goblet down empty. "I will speak to Father."

"I have never asked you for anything, Boro."

"I know," said Boromir. "That is why I will fight to the last to help you get this girl, if that is what you want. I swear it."

They raised their goblets, drank deep. He could see that Boromir was more than exhausted.

"Rest, brother," he said, and stood. "We will talk more tonight. Perhaps you will come with me, and meet my Buffy."

He was at the door when Boromir spoke.

"You cannot know how beautiful she is, Fara." His voice, low and weary, was itself full of light. "More beautiful than any woman I have ever seen. I could barely remember my own name when I looked at her. I would have taken her with me by force of arms if I could have found her again, like the Horse-lords do in the sagas. I would not have cared what anyone said."

"That is how it is for me," said Faramir. He turned again. "Though every man in the world were to rise up against me, I would fight to keep her. She...a man cannot help but that he love such a heart as hers, whatever anyone else says."

Boromir raised his head, and when they looked at each other, they saw that they had come to an understanding, and that each had made up his mind to stand by the other, against all comers.

"Wait and see, brother," said Boromir, and smiled. "We will beat back the Enemy, as if we have done before. I will conquer Father, and then you will marry your lady, and I mine. A few years from now, we will be sitting where we are today, and we will be watching our sons play as we did when we were children."

"Let us hope they do not play quite as we did," said Faramir, returning the smile, "or there will not be much left of Minas Tirith for you to be Steward of."

They laughed together, the sons of Denethor, and then Faramir left his brother and went out.


	21. Chapter 21

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The blade was perhaps thirty-six, thirty-seven inches from point to guard, nearly two inches at the base, and fullered twelve, twelve-and-a-half inches. The guard was nigh ten inches wide, angular and flat in the cross-section, the grip black leather, tight and spare. A circular pommel topped the grip, flat on both sides and unadorned.

"Is that a new sword? I have not seen it before."

Boromir looked well-rested for only a few hours of good sleep. He was armed again in his sword and vambraces, with a thick cloak clasped at the neck. Otherwise, he had dressed quite modestly, in tunic, surcoat, and leggings. Faramir had talked him out of wearing the uniform of the High Warden of the White Tower with difficulty. He had shaved as well, though his hair was still longer than he was used to wearing it.

"No," said Faramir. "This was a gift."

He gave it into Boromir's hand when his brother held it out, and watched as Boromir wielded it.

"Perfect balance," Boromir murmured. He made a quick, wide swing. "Weighs almost nothing." He paused, holding the sword out straight in front, and looked at Faramir. "Bare bones, but... Have you tested it yet?"

Faramir shook his head. "I received it recently," he said, "and have had other things to think about."

"Later, then." Boromir moved as if he would give the sword back, but then stopped, his eyes locked on the blade.

"Faramir," he said quietly, "the trees...?"

Faramir said nothing, and, after a moment, Boromir gave the sword back into his hand.

"Now," said Boromir, adjusting his cloak. "Let us speak to the captains, and then we will go see your Buffy."

They turned their faces in the direction of the War Corridor, where the captains of the armies were to be assembled. The Citadel had come alive since Boromir's return, as the Steward finally gave the orders for the mobilization of troops. The quartermasters were already hard at work, and the call had gone out into the country for the outlying lords to provide numbers of armed men.

"I meant to tell you, brother," Faramir said quietly. "Theodred is here."

"Here?" Boromir frowned, nodding to a passing guard. "I had not heard. Father did not mention it."

"He does not know. I saw Theodred and his cousins among the Rohirrim camped at the Fair. Now I suppose they are somewhere in the city." He held back. "He did not announce himself, and he has no retinue that I have seen."

Boromir looked as if he were mulling over what he had heard. "While returning home, I heard rumors that a shieldmaiden had appeared in Edoras."

"And Theodred is trying to find her," finished Faramir. "Mablung told me the same."

"Do you think Theodred believes the shieldmaiden to be in Minas Tirith?"

Faramir had not expected his gut to wrench as it did. "That would explain his presence here, though not why he would come in secrecy." He hesitated. "Unless she is fleeing him."

"Perhaps she is extraordinarily beautiful," said Boromir, smiling, "and he wants to catch her and convince her to marry him, in which case I understand why he would not want to tell such a breaker of hearts as you."

"Alas, my career as a seducer of cruel warrior women is over. I have been undone by a girl with a hammer."

Boromir burst out laughing, getting looks from servants and guards alike. He clapped a hand over his mouth and struggled.

When he had regained control of himself, he looked at Faramir with a considering eye. "You have changed, Faramir."

At the doors leading into the War Corridor, Boromir stopped, briefly laying his hand on Faramir's shoulder. "Do you remember when Theodred came to Minas Tirith with his father when we were children?"

"Mostly I remember how you two fought like Huan and Carcharoth."

"I remind you that I was fighting for your honor."

"Ah. The threatened honor of a five-year-old."

"And then you betrayed me by hanging about him as if he were your brother and not I."

"Well, it was a very good toy horse he gave me. I recall you wouldn't let me play with any of yours."

Boromir smiled, but then looked at his brother thoughtfully. When he spoke, his voice was low and soft. "What is she like, Faramir?"

The question caught him off his guard. "Buffy? She...well, she..."

He broke off, unable to think of what to say. He remembered her sitting on her stool beside the bed, making her clumsy stitches. He remembered her taking his hand, remembered dancing with her through the simbelmyne. He remembered kissing her.

"She has green eyes," he said, "and...and golden hair. She's...she's very small."

Boromir laughed, in the same quiet tone he had spoken with. "I suppose we really are brothers, we have so many of the same tastes. You could be talking of my lady."

"Truly?" Faramir thought of Buffy climbing out a window in her underclothes and smiled. That would be like her. "And is your lady more beautiful than anything you have ever seen before in your life, lovelier than even the White City on a summer day?"

He did not expect an answer, watching as Boromir turned to gaze out a window in the far wall, outside to where the storm was beginning to slake, slowly releasing its grip of thunder and lightening over the city.

"Yes," said Boromir, and seemed as surprised as Faramir at his own answer. "Yes, Faramir. My lady is more beautiful than anything I have ever seen, even above that which I have loved more than all other things my entire life."

Faramir did not know what to say. There was a tightness behind his eyes, and he felt as if he were watching his brother, the man he knew better than anyone else alive, falling from a very high place. He could not put a reason to that feeling, however, and could not think how to express it.

"Come, little brother," said Boromir, turning. His face became familiar again, flashing that grin he had known all his life. "There's war to make, and then you must introduce me to your Buffy. I want to have a look at this girl who is about to give our father more trouble than he has ever had before."

Then the doors opened, and the assembled captains of Gondor loosed a great cry as the Captain-General of Minas Tirith strode in.


	22. Chapter 22

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The night was wet and gray in the gloom of the waning storm. The city gleamed with yellow torchlight, and the taverns were loud and merry. The lower quarters of the city had become a winding string of lights and singers, the Fair of Tuile having carried on in the very teeth of the gale, though rather more damp than before. Drinking and singing and dancing, lord and villein alike engaged in their own revelries, paying scant attention to anyone else, as busy as they all were at their own businesses and pleasures and watching their feet. The cobbles were precarious when wet, so slippery at such an incline that on the worst days, horses could not be taken through some streets. There were always a few broken necks.

The Fair, having been driven inside the walls by the weather, had quickly reestablished in the streets, under pitched canvas and in public houses. The city hosted more people for a week than it would the year after; Lampwrights' Street was a riot waiting to happen. Untroubled by the downpour, talk of war, or by the front only a few miles away, the Fair went on as it did every Tuile, come Orcs or Wargs or Orcs riding Wargs.

The sons of Denethor walked close together, their cloaks pulled tight, Boromir's eyes and expression those of a man at last come home from long exile. Faramir was reminded of himself when he was out on duty in Ithilien, skulking in caves and under trees, stalking Orcs and watching for southrons, all the while thinking of the white stone-light that shone from the walls of Minas Tirith by the light of Anor.

"I have been thinking," Boromir was saying, "and it seems to me that we should begin the search in Dorwinion."

Faramir made a noise in the back of his throat. "You know, simply because a place is _called_ the 'Land of Maidens—'"

"Now hear me out," said Boromir impatiently, and Faramir sighed. "Everyone knows that the people of Dorwinion have much to do with Elves. And I have heard that the women in those lands are fairer than in others. I should think it would be worth sending a herald or two. I wouldn't cry if my wife were to come from a family known for their wines."

Faramir shook his head, talking over his shoulder as he paid a coin for two seed cakes at a stall selling pastries. "Now you want to marry a winemaker's daughter? At this rate, I won't have any trouble at all. Father will expire of apoplexy ere we approach the subject of swordsmiths."

"I have also," continued Boromir, now ignoring him, "dispatched a message to our uncle. Dol Amroth has always had close ties to the Elves. I asked him if there were anyone of his acquaintance who had recently sought elvish healing."

"Uncle's people are tall and dark-haired."

"That is why I will send to the Forodwaith, as well," said Boromir. He wiped the last of the cake from his lips and nodded to a woman serving cups of hot ale. "They are known to be a pale-haired people, and there are among them still a few lords who traffic with Elves. I would have gone myself, while I was still in the north, but I had begun to come near the bottom of my purse. I could not bear to appear at her door and present myself to her relatives looking a beggar."

"Your modesty has always been a standard of behavior for me," said Faramir, and had to move quickly to avoid the blow Boromir aimed at the back of his head, spilling half his cup.

They were nearing the street of blacksmiths, and Faramir felt anticipation thrum in his limbs and tighten his legs, as if he were sighting down the shaft of an arrow. He had never thought to find himself in such a position, and he felt awkward and unsure. He would rather have had someone to advise him, but there was no one to ask, for Mablung was unmarried and he had no other close acquaintances to turn to. How did a man behave and what did he say, when he took his brother to meet his betrothed?

They came to the place where the street of armorers and swordmakers met the street of blacksmiths. There, he pulled his brother to the side, beneath a guttering lamp.

"Boromir," he began, "I ask you now to be gentle with her. Minas Tirith has not been kind—"

"Do you think me a Dunlending?" asked Boromir disbelievingly. He seemed almost hurt. "I have never been cruel."

"She is foreign," said Faramir, "and our ways are not hers—"

Boromir closed his eyes, a faintly pained expression on his face, and when he looked at his brother again, he was shaking his head. "Lowborn, a swordsmith, and now a foreigner. Of all women, Faramir—"

"I will kill any man who calls my wife lowborn," said Faramir.

Boromir stood very still, his lips slightly parted, stricken speechless. His head had come up and back, his chin lifted, his body stiff. He looked like a man who had been struck unexpectedly.

Faramir looked at his brother.

"Come, Boromir," he said quietly. "It is getting late."

He turned and walked down the street. After a moment, he heard Boromir follow.

The house was not dark. There was light in the windows, the soft yellow of candles and a hearth fire. When he came nearer, he could hear singing, a woman's voice raised in an old Lamedonian lied. The voice was not Buffy's, and not an old woman's, and he wondered affectionately how many she had living in her house now. He could see that they would always have trouble with servants and beggars, they would take such advantage of her, and he would have to be the firm hand in their household.

"Faramir," his brother was saying, and his voice was faint and distant. "You say that Buffy is a foreigner."

"Yes," he said, himself inattentive. He went up to the door and knocked, thumping his gloved knuckles against the wood. The singing broke off, and there was a brief, tense silence. "When we met, she barely spoke a word of Westron."

"And you say that she is small," said Boromir, "with golden hair and...and green eyes."

Someone had come against the door, was listening.

"Yes," said Faramir. "She is perhaps the height of my shoulder."

"And..."

Faramir looked back for his brother, but Boromir was not there. He was standing a short way up the street, halfway between the door and the nearest lantern, and he could not clearly see Boromir's face.

He took a single step forward, away from the house. "Boromir?"

The door opened behind him, and cast at his feet a square of ocher light that glowed warmly against his legs. Faramir turned, and she was there, on the threshold, her shining hair loose down her back.

She smiled.

"Faramir," she said softy, and the simple act of her speaking his name made his heart ache.

He restrained himself. Rather than take her in his arms, he only took her hands, sliding his palms down her wrists and gripping her fingers with his. She shivered, coming closer, laying her head on his arm.

He could not remember ever being as happy as he was now.

"Buffy," he said, "I have brought someone to meet you. He is my brother, Boromir." He turned, bringing her farther out of the house, and looked back into the street. "Boromir—"

There was no one there.

He hesitated. Giving Buffy a look he suspected was very confused, he relinquished her hands and walked out onto the wet cobbles, looking up and down the street.

Many of the lamps were guttering or out, but there, up where the street of armorers and swordsmiths met the street of blacksmiths, he saw a figure walking, passing in and out of the pools of light.

"I—" Faramir did not know what to say. He looked at her, then at the distant shape of his brother, disappearing around the corner of a silversmith's shop. Finally, he turned to her, said, "Wait," and hastened up the street.

Boromir was walking very quickly, but Faramir gained him before he was more than halfway down the thoroughfare. Boromir's head was down, his shoulders rigid, and, when Faramir caught his arm and pulled it back, he saw that his brother had a sharp-knuckled grip on his sword hilt.

"Boromir—"

The man shook him off. "Leave me!"

"Boromir!" He grasped the arm again, now dug in his heels. "Boromir, what—"

With a strangled cry, Boromir swung around, throwing out his arm. He struck Faramir in the shoulder with enough force to knock him backward, nearly hurling him off his feet and onto the slippery stone. Faramir lost his grip, staggering back with his arms held out, hands open.

They stood, Boromir breathing as harshly as if he had just come out of battle. Faramir's eyes were wide, and he saw that Boromir's face was bloodless and white.

"Boromir," he said. "Brother—"

"You cannot ask this of me, Faramir," said Boromir, and his voice was racked and hoarse, as if he would shout but for his raw throat. "You cannot ask my help in this! Not this! Not for her!"

"What are you saying?" said Faramir, and now his voice held a thread of panic. "You have not even spoken to her! You've barely seen her! Why—"

"For pity's sake, Faramir, as we are brothers, do not ask this from me," cried Boromir.

Then, for once in his life, Faramir felt his anger burn as hotly in his blood as it had never done before, and he went and seized his brother's arm. Boromir resisted and they grappled, struggling brutally against each other as Faramir tried to make his brother look at him.

But Boromir had always been larger and stronger, and he finally threw Faramir off with a shout. He did not fall, but again stumbled back, and then they stood looking at each other, gasping.

"Not this, Faramir," said Boromir, and now his voice was a thing of quiet agony, cracked and broken with pain. "Anything but this."

"Then you betray me!" cried Faramir. "All my life I have never asked anything of you, though you and Father cut out my heart again and again! Now you would even deny me this! Will neither of you rest until I have nothing? _Brother, you swore you would help me_."

"Faramir," said Boromir, and his voice was crushed and empty, his face stiff and waxen, like that of a corpse. "Faramir."

He put his hand over his face, turned, and, without looking at Faramir again, strode away into the dark, through the wet and empty streets, toward the lights that would take him back to the Citadel.


	23. Chapter 23

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The hall of the house was empty when she brought him inside. The fire burned low, the rushes had been swept up, and a lighted candle stood on the table, over a quill sitting in a bottle of ink and several sheafs of parchment.

He sat at the table, on the bench at one side, and Buffy motioned for him to stay while she went into the kitchen. The warmth of the hearth soothed the throbbing in his shoulder, and he laid aside his belted sword, wet cloak, and gloves.

A scuffling noise at the stair made him turn. He caught a glimpse of a boy's tousled head and sleep-flushed face, dark-haired and dark-eyed, which disappeared with a gasp when the child saw him looking.

Buffy returned with a mug of hot ale, and he thanked her and drank. She sat on the opposite side of the table, folding her arms and leaning against it, her chin in her hand.

He saw that she had gained some weight, and liked it very much. Where before she had been almost too thin, the bones like knife-edges in her cheeks and limbs, now she was soft and curved in the lines of her face and hands, and her hair and eyes and skin shone with health. She wore that look well, and he made up his mind to see that she kept it. He had noticed before that she barely ate anything, and sometimes worked herself too hard, and too, she did not eat enough meat. He would have to watch her, he decided, and quietly take care of her when she did not take care of herself, as he did for his brother.

He did not know what his expression must have looked like or how it must have changed, but Buffy frowned and straightened in her seat. He turned his eyes away, down at the table, and, for lack of anything else, looked at the parchment.

With a short cry like a child's yelp, Buffy clapped her hands down over the parchment, covering as much of it as she could with her hands and arms and nearly upsetting the candle. He jumped, startled, and stared as she half lay on the table, face red.

"Not done," she muttered. A smudge of ink showed where her chin had rubbed the parchment.

He laughed, and the despair aching in his heart seemed to grow much less. He touched her chin affectionately, with the tips of his fingers, as if she were a child. "Won't you show it to me?" he asked softly. "I promise I'll not tease you."

She tried to scowl, but could only pout. Slowly, reluctantly, she sat up, nervously straightening the sheafs.

He looked at them, and saw writing in a girlish hand, some of which he recognized, some of which he did not. A fraction of the writing was in Adunaic, with the specific letters written in a line at the top of the page. Much more of it was in an angular, squarish writing that he could not read and had never seen before, and he guessed that this was the written form of her native language.

A few of the phrases in Adunaic caught his eye. _When the last eagle flies_ and_ at the last dusty fountain _and, near the bottom, hesitantly, as if she were uncertain,_ at the last...?_

He looked at her.

"It is a song," she said, and shyly averted her eyes. "I...like it. I have liked it...since? Since. Since I was small."

_"Was?"_ he asked exaggeratedly, and laughed as she made a still more distressed pout. "No, forgive me, I did not mean it. Here. Sing this to me."

"No!"

"What? You won't sing to your own intended?"

She shook her head firmly, that determined look in her eyes that he already knew and recognized.

He sighed. "Very well. Then at least let me help you."

They leaned over the parchment, heads close enough together that her hair brushed his hand and face. He took up the quill and they talked and laughed as she tried to describe the words she wanted to him and he was reduced to making guesses. The room grew darker as they worked, and neither noticed when the fire burned to cinders and the candle to a stub.

At some point, he was rubbing at a blot of ink on his wrist when he looked up to see her watching him.

Her face was very grave and her eyes indecipherable when she said, "Your brother."

The pain was like a blow to the stomach. He said nothing, slowly placing the quill back in its bottle.

She bit her lip. "Faramir," she said. "This...this is..."

But either she could not bring herself to say what she wanted or she did not know the words, for she fell silent. Her expression was one of someone trying to speak on something they could not bear to think about.

"Faramir," she tried again, and this time he saw how she held herself, how her eyes shone like tempered steel. He was reminded, without warning, of a knight putting his back to the wall as he prepared to meet the onslaught. "We—"

_"No,"_ he said.

She looked away, but her face had broken.

He stood up and came around the table to kneel before her, and took her hands in his.

"What is between my brother and myself is not your fault," he told her quietly. "You cannot blame yourself for something that began many years ago, before you were born. What is happening now is only a thing we have been struggling against since Boromir and I were children, and would have come someday regardless. This is not your doing. It is mine." He touched her neck, her cheek. "Do not speak of leaving me. I will not let you."

She raised her head. "Faramir," she said, and her voice was small and afraid. "Faramir, I...I am not...I mean, I am not from...I..."

Her eyes closed and she struggled, trying to find the words and to say them, and she looked so frightened than he took her in his arms. She slid off the bench and onto his knee, and clung to him as if she were a child.

"Faramir," she said. She was trembling. "You don't...you don't know. I have to tell you—"

He closed his eyes, held her close.

"I have to tell you," she said.

He whispered into her hair, "I love you."

Then she cried, weeping into his neck, clinging to him as if he were the only thing that kept her from falling from a terrible height, and he held her and said nothing.

Later, when the hearth was full of ash and the candle had guttered out and the room was dark, Buffy, now quiet, slid from his knee to the floor. He lowered himself more stiffly, and then they sat looking at each other, their backs against the bench.

"My mother," Buffy began, her voice faint and low with sorrow, "her name was Joyce."


	24. Chapter 24

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Abruptly, without any warning, the front door of the house shuddered on its lock and hinges, hammered from the other side.

She was on her feet. He had not seen the movement, though he had been looking straight at her, as if there had been no transition and she had in one breath been sitting and in the next standing. Her feet were planted slightly apart, the length of her tunic and surcoat tautened by how she positioned her legs, and a long-bladed dagger had appeared in her hand, held loosely by the hilt, low and out in a knife-fighter's grip. Her eyes, wide and lucent in the faint light glimmering through the shutters on the window, were on the door.

He stood slowly, watching her more than the door, and she looked at him with a cat's turn of her head. Then she seemed to remember where she was, and what she had been doing only seconds ago, and, straightening, lowered the knife, blushing suddenly and darkly. Her eyes dropped and would not meet his.

"By command of the Steward," called a voice from outside, and the door shook with blows again.

A small light appeared at the head of the stair, and then the old man came hobbling down, a candle in his hand. The old woman was behind him, as well as the boy he had seen earlier, all of them dressed and clear-eyed. They bowed to him without hesitating.

The old man went to the door, putting a hand to the lock. He turned to look at the two of them, and then slowly undid the lock, opening the door in such a way that he alone stood revealed in the gap.

"We come for Lord Faramir, son of the Steward," said the same voice. "Be you master of the house?"

The old man shook his head, but Faramir, having put on his cloak and belt and gloves again, now came up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder. The old man bowed and stepped aside, and he went forward in his place.

A Guard of the Citadel stood on the doorstep, a captain in rank. Behind him were at least four other Guards, and, to one side, looking extremely censorious, were Mablung and Madril, his two chiefest lieutenants. Two torchbearers, guardsmen, accompanied them.

"I am here," he said, and did not have to feign at being displeased. "Why do you come in force? You have disrupted the peace of the street and disturbed my hosts."

The captain bowed and looked discomfited, but answered, "By command of the Steward, my lord. He bade us come down to a certain house on the street of blacksmiths and charge you to come within the hour to the Tower Hall, where he awaits you. We were instructed to go in haste."

A feeling as hard and heavy as a stone sat in his stomach, but he only nodded. "Very well." He turned to go back in, to tell her what was happening, and the captain made a noise in the back of his throat.

"My lord," the man said, and now he was embarrassed. "My lord, we were instructed to bring you posthaste, without letting you out of our sight."

There was a tense silence. Mablung's and Madril's faces were dark with outrage. The Guards of the Citadel looked down, sparing him their watching, while the torchbearers looked at each other.

Humiliated, but familiar with such small humiliations, Faramir turned again, stepping through the door and down to the street without further speech, forcing the captain to move quickly back. He could barely keep his anger from showing in his expression, and looked at Mablung, intending to question him. He saw Mablung's eyes grow wide, his mouth open, and heard a sudden, stifled gasp from Madril.

He looked back, and saw Buffy.

She stood in the doorway, the light of the torches casting on her hair a fulgent sheen like iron glowing hot in the forge. She still wore the brown surcoat and the green tunic, as well as her leaf-worked belt, but over that she also had on a broader belt of leather, and on it hung a sheathed sword. The point hung at her ankle, barely missing scraping the ground, and she had her hand laid casually on the hilt. Her pose was that of a knight at ease, hand on her sword, the other on her hip, her head up and back and eyes calm and fearless. Every line of her body thrummed with the tension that they, soldiers all, recognized as checked violence.

He had never seen her look more like a shieldmaiden than she did now. She was less a girl and more a living blade, bright and sharp, and it was as if in her knightly stance, in her cool, calculating eyes, in the way she so absolutely looked at them, in how still and _unconcerned_ she was, he was seeing for the first time not the girl she so effectively played at being, but the warrior.

His breath caught, and he bowed. When he looked at her again, he tried to tell her in a glance everything he wanted to say aloud. "My lady, I go to my father."

She looked at him, and nodded, a gesture more queenly in its simplicity than anything he had ever seen any other lady or dame affect. "My lord, I will wait for you."

There was only the smallest trace of her accent. He was startled at how attractive he found it, and turned away to hide his reaction. _This_ was the girl they had all thought a laundress, a maid.

The captain was staring at her as if at a thing he could not believe was real, and it took Faramir's increasingly irritated "Captain!" to bring him back.

"Forgive me, my lord," he said, and his voice was somewhat hoarse. He cleared his throat, brought his men back to themselves and attention with a few low, sharp orders, and bowed to give Faramir the place at the head. Mablung came up on his right, leaving the captain to take the left and Madril to follow behind with the others, and then they were walking away from the house and up the street.

He could tell that those with him were glancing over their shoulders, not quite bold enough to actually look back to where he knew Buffy was watching after them, and smiled at Mablung without looking at him. "Perhaps when you have put your eyes back in your head, you might tell me what is happening."

He knew without seeing it that Mablung had flushed with chagrin, and he felt almost like laughing at having caught the sternest of his lieutenants like that.

"I do not know, my lord," said Mablung stiffly. "I only heard that the Steward had dispatched men to get you, and hastened with Madril to make certain it was a retinue that brought you back to the Citadel, not a guard."

"You are always watching my back, my friend," Faramir said softly, "even when I myself forget."

"_Someone_ should," replied Mablung.

They walked without speaking for a few moments, with only the noise of their heavy footsteps on the cobbles.

"I had never imagined," said Mablung quietly, "anything like her."

"Nor I," said Faramir. "If I have been foolish of late, perhaps now you understand some of it."

"More," said Mablung.

He saw again in his mind the way she had looked, and now he saw something else, how there was a curious and inexplicable apposition to her; between the cold menace of her hand on the sword, her silent, still readiness for battle, and the open, glaring vulnerability of her bare and slender neck.

He had been _so close_ to knowing! She had wanted to tell him, at last, after everything! Now...

Thinking of her hand on the hilt of a sword reminded him of another hand on another hilt, and he felt the stone again in his stomach.

"How did you know to go there?" He still did not look at Mablung. "To that house, of which I have not told—many."

"I do not know," said Mablung. "I followed the captain, and he seemed to know where he went."

If the captain heard them talking he did not speak on it or in answer, and Faramir was suddenly loath to ask. He thought of Boromir and the expression on his face as he told him _Not this, Faramir. Anything but this_

He said quietly, "I fear I am lost."

"Perhaps it is not what you think," said Mablung. "Perhaps he plans to deploy the Rangers ahead of the armies and calls you to give you your orders. It would not be the first time he got you up in the middle of the night to throw you out of the city. Or do you suppose this time he is going to order us to march straight into Mordor? It has been a while since he's commanded you to take a desperate stand against hopeless odds."

"I suppose I could always try to single-handedly retake Osgiliath," sighed Faramir. "Slaughter the hordes, thrash the Orc chieftains, pull down the Black Gates, put out the Eye, rejuvenate the Black Land, plant a grove of White Trees, and return in time for him to harangue me for failing to find and destroy Ungoliant."

"It could be worse," Mablung reminded him, straight-faced. "He could be about to give you a posting in Rohan."

There was a muffled cough in the rear, and Faramir glanced over his shoulder. Then he frowned, slowed, and turned to the captain.

"There were four Guards here," he said. "Now I see only two."

The captain looked at him. "A different errand, my lord," he said.

Faramir looked at him, and then turned and continued on.

Late as it was, the streets were dark and empty. They encountered another patrol, who stared at them as they went by, but otherwise they saw no one else. Even the lamplighters were gone to their own beds, and no revelers staggered from the taverns they passed. The night was cold and still wet, and he could hear the faint noise of running water in the channels through which the rainwater drained. Every footfall was echoed and made louder by the peculiar qualities of wet stone, and the higher into the city they went, the quieter it became.

They passed through each gate unquestioned, and soon emerged from the Tunnel-Way into the High Court. Here the two remaining Guards hung back, as did Madril, and the captain, Mablung, and Faramir continued to the very doors of the tower, where the captain turned aside.

Mablung stayed as well, looking at Faramir again before he left.

"Do not worry," he said quietly, when Faramir looked at him. "I will watch out for her, if it comes to that."

Faramir could not speak. He nodded, clasping his friend's arm, and went through the doors alone.

The door-wardens let him by without a nod or a word, and he walked through the passageway of stone up to the door of the Tower Hall. There he stopped to try and prepare himself, but nothing he thought or said to himself was of any help. He felt a cold, gripping premonition of despair, as if even as he went forward hoping against hope, a part of him already knew what anguish lay ahead and dreaded its coming. He knew he had been foolish, and, what was worse, careless, and that he, Faramir, had brought much of what would happen on his own head. Yet the worst thing, the most awful thing, was that he had brought this on Buffy as well, and that she suffered by having known him.

Buffy.

He straightened his back, squared his shoulders, and breathed deeply.

He would think of Buffy. She was his bride, the girl he would marry and make his wife, and while it was true that he had been stupid and injudicious, he could not be weak now. He had done what he had done, and all there was left to do was go on. He had to prevail, had to go back and find her in that room where she had wept in his arms and was waiting, now, to finally, _finally_ tell him everything, beginning with her mother's name, the name she had given him before they had been found.

And, too, he could not quite bring himself to regret anything.

Thinking of her looking at him, thrusting all other thoughts away, he went forward to the tall, polished door of metal and struck his fist on it. It opened, and he stepped through into the Tower Hall.

His father waited for him in the seat of the Steward. He wore his robes of state, though it was the middle of the night, and his face was shadowed and made haggard by the light of few and scattered candles. He watched Faramir come with an expression like graven stone, as if he were only another one of the effigies that lined the hall.

The Tower Hall was otherwise empty, and Faramir approached in a long, hollow hush.

"As you commanded me, my lord," he said, and bowed.

His father said nothing, and Faramir fixed his eyes on the floor. It galled Denethor when his younger son looked him in the eye, and provoked his temper. He also disliked it when Faramir did not meet his glare, having said before that it was improper that a son of the Steward should go with his eyes lowered as if he were a servant—but he disliked it _less_, and so Faramir looked at the floor.

Denethor watched him stand, and the silence became stretched. Unease pricked down the skin of Faramir's neck and spine and tightened the muscles of his shoulders. The expression on his father's face was one he had never seen before, and did not know how to interpret. He felt again that inexplicable feeling of waiting for something, a blow, to fall, a sickening feeling as if he groped for a sword that he could not grasp and tried to lift a shield that was too heavy for his arm even as he watched the point of the blade descend at his unguarded breast.

Finally, Denethor stood, a black, crow-like figure rising slowly from the chair of black stone.

"So," he said, and his voice was low and cold and filled with disgust. "You at last come crawling out of the bed of your whore."

For a moment, it was as if he could not understand what had been said, as if his father had spoken in a foreign tongue he did not know. Faramir stood very still, and after several long, shuddering breaths, his first conscious thought was that there was a small, sharp pain in his hands, and a slick wetness. Stiffly, he raised his open hands to look at them, and was, in a dazed, distant way, taken aback to see that the nails of his fingers had gouged into his flesh, and his hands were slippery with blood.

His father was staring at him. Faramir lowered his hands again, tried to recognize the hot, roiling feeling that was scorching his bones, and it was as if a part of himself stood back from him and asked, _Is this hate?_

So. His father had come at him openly, sparing nothing in the first attack. He would do the same.

"We have plighted our troth," he said, and the voice that spoke, the voice that was his, was low and cold and filled with anger. "I will marry her, and make her my wife."

Denethor's face grew like iron. "You will do as you are commanded!" he spat. "I have turned my face from this, thinking it simply another of your callow follies. Now I see I should have taken a stricter grasp! You behave in such a way that I cannot ignore it, traipsing about the city with your harlot where anyone can see. No more! You will give up your whore, and turn your attentions back to your duties."

"No, Father," said Faramir. "For once, I cannot do as you would have me do. Not this time."

"You defy me?" asked Denethor, disbelieving. "I, your lord and your father? Are you now a traitor as well as a disappointment?"

"No," said Faramir. "I obey you as you instructed me in my childhood, by honoring my promises. I keep my sworn oath, the pledge I made over the grave of my mother."

Denethor's face blanched white. He staggered back as if he had been struck. "Your mother?" he said, and his voice shook and fractured as it had never done before. "Your mother?"

"In Rath Dinen I made my vow," said Faramir. "Before my mother I swore to marry none but her, though all the world rise against me."

Denethor looked on his son, and, for a single, strangled heartbeat, his mouth and eyes contorted painfully as if with grief. Then his features cleared and stiffened into a more familiar face, everything so quickly that Faramir was hard put to tell that it had ever happened, and when he opened his eyes again, they were bleak and fathomless.

"So be it," said Denethor, and, taking up his white rod of office, struck the floor three times.

The door opened, and in came a crowd of people. Faramir saw that these were the officers of the court, the nobles, the functionaries, and even the higher-ranked officers of the armies. He recognized the captain of the Guards of the Citadel, his lieutenants among the Rangers of Ithilien, and a number of others he knew from the field. And there, among the other lords, he saw, inexplicably, Hirluin the Fair and Lord Forlong of Lossarnach.

These were all the nobles and all the highly ranked to be found in the Citadel that night, he realized, and they had to have been waiting somewhere, to assemble as quickly as they had. They were all dressed still, and looked awake and unquiet, as if they were witnessing something they did not want to see, and more than one man could not meet his eyes as they came silently in to take their places.

There were no women.

He looked about the Tower Hall, and saw Mablung nearer the doors, just slipped in. The stricken look on Mablung's face made sudden fear tear at his guts.

Where was Boromir?

Faramir looked at his father, at the Steward in his seat.

Denethor regarded him dispassionately, and then turned to address the captain of the Guards of the Citadel, his eyes never leaving his son's face.

"Bring her," he said.


	25. Chapter 25

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The captain of the Guards of the Citadel went to the door. Faramir heard it open, heard a low-murmured command and boot heels on the stone floor.

Dread coiling in his heart, he turned.

She walked slowly, hesitantly. A gray cloak, familiar to him, covered her from head to foot, hiding much of her face. Two Guards, each bearing his spear and shield, walked with her, to either side and a small space behind. They followed the captain of the Guards, who led that strange procession to the middle of the Tower Hall, before the seat of the Steward. When he halted, he had came almost to the foot of the seat, so that Faramir found himself standing perhaps four or five strides away from her, to her left, and, when she turned to look at him, he could see her face, quiet and expressionless, below her hood.

"Let her show her face," said his father.

The captain's brow furrowed, and his were not the only lips that pressed together as if curbing an objection. Still, he turned, and, mouth barely moving to whisper his apology, reached up and gently pulled down her hood.

Faramir felt more than heard the sigh, the abrupt exhalation of air that filled the Tower Hall. The captain's hands, where they grasped handfuls of gray cloth, shook as he let go and stepped away.

With her Guards towering over her, she seemed much smaller than he remembered her being when she had stood on the doorstep with her hand on the hilt. She was almost overshadowed by the men who stood near her, the top of her head barely reaching the shoulder of one and the upper arm of the other. Her hair was loose and shining, her neck and shoulders as fragile as the stems of _uilos_, and her eyes were living green.

He saw the hands of the Guards tighten on the hafts of their spears. He saw Hirluin's eyes close and his throat work as he swallowed.

"So." Denethor stood. "This is the woman who has turned my son's head."

Faramir remembered where he was, what was happening. He turned to look at his father. "She is my bride," he said, and his voice seemed to him more undaunted and certain than he had ever heard it before. "We are plighted."

"Oh, Faramir," said Denethor, and his voice was low and full of grief "Faramir, my guileless son, she has utterly inveigled you."

Faramir's mouth opened, but he was speechless. He stared at his father, disbelief and horror splitting open in his heart, and he did not know what to do. When his father, coming up to him, laid his hand on Faramir's shoulder, the hand of a father comforting his wronged son, bile stung in the back of Faramir's throat and he wanted to retch.

"My son," said Denethor, and his voice trembled as if with pity and heartache. "My son, you who have always had the gentler heart, the kinder nature—I have failed you!" Now a grimace, as if he himself were in pain. "I did not bring you up as harshly as I did Boromir, for I thought you and he were so unalike in temper that to do so would be to harden you too cruelly. This is my doing, this folly! I forgive you of all, my son, for I kept you so close that a beautiful woman was able to do to you what she could not have to your brother, whom I taught more rigidly."

_"You," _gritted Faramir, but Denethor had turned away, was now looking at Buffy, who was standing very still, watching them.

"Now we come to you," he said, and his voice was again what it had always been, sinuous with a noiseless, subtle menace.

Faramir looked around at those gathered. Those who knew him, those who knew the Steward and his sons, wore disbelief sheer on their faces, overwhelmed by the bald-faced lies. Mablung's jaw was clenched, the muscles taut in his neck, and Lord Forlong and Hirluin of Pinnath Gelin showed their disgust openly. But others, those who were not close to the ruling family or were not as perceptive, those who prospered by retaining the support of the Steward, were turning doubting eyes on the girl standing alone in the hall, and he could see how many they were.

"You, girl," said Denethor, and he was colder than the peaks of the White Mountains in winter. "From where do you come?"

She stood, silent.

"Who is your family?"

There was no answer. Her eyes were lowered.

"What is your birth?"

Nothing.

"Now hear me," said Denethor, and he spoke not to her or to his son, but those others in the Tower Hall. "I did not call you here to witness my son's folly. It is painful enough without your eyes.

"I called you here to bring to light this girl's wrong-doings. You will hear her crimes, you will hear my judgment, and you will bear witness to the fact that I do not punish her for my son's dalliance, but for breaking the law of Minas Tirith."

There was a murmur, a swell of noise that broke and scattered as the Steward raised his rod.

"Let it be known," he said, "that in the course of her liaison with my second-born son, this girl raised herself up as a pretender. Despite having no history, no family, and being unable to prove her birth, she repeatedly presented herself as nobly born. She adorned herself in silver and gold; she took on servants and pages; she aspired to improve her station by attaching herself to a lord of high rank; and, worst of all, she possesses in her house knightly weapons, swords and armor and shields that only a lord invested by the hand of his ruler may own.

"Let it also be known that, as lesser offenses, she puts herself out as a swordsmith and an armorer, firstly without obtaining the legal right to practice and secondly without proving an apprenticeship of seven years, and that she took on apprentices of her own in furtherance of this.

"These are not the complete list of her crimes, but only the ones of greatest consequence."

Faramir could not breathe.

This was madness. This was cruelty. This was sheer and utter _nonsense_, the petty business of bailiffs and sheriffs.

This was true.

"In ordinary times, such things would be beneath the notice of a Steward," his father was saying, his voice heavy with regret, "and I am ashamed to have to sully my hands with these doings. Withal, this is no ordinary time, for my son has become caught up in this, in her schemes, through only the fault of a good and generous heart that, being unable to lie, cannot understand the facilities of others to lie. And I, his father, having failed in my duty to inure him against these matters, now come to fulfill my fatherly obligations, however late."

He turned to Faramir, who had listened, stricken dumb, the while. "Forgive me for the pain I cause you, my son, for I do this only for love. I will save you from her, though—" His face looked troubled and grave, but his eyes flashed. "—you hate me for it."

"Father," said Faramir helplessly, but Denethor turned away again, and looked directly at a white-haired lord who was a member of the Council.

"Tell me," he said, and now there was something like foreboding in the room, in the eyes of all who watched. "What is the punishment for unlawful commerce?"

The lord hesitated, but had to speak, reluctant. "Fines, my lord, and imprisonment."

"And what," continued the Steward, tone as unrelenting as iron, "is the punishment for false pretense?"

The lord's face became distressed, and he hesitated. "My lord," he said, breathing deeply, "surely there is cause for mercy here—"

"What is the law?" asked Denethor, and the threat was unmistakable.

The lord's mouth worked. "The lash, my lord," he said finally, low and grudging. "To be scourged until the blood flows, and then to be branded on the face."

"No!" cried Faramir, and all eyes swung to him but hers. "This is Numenorean law, from the days of Ar-Pharazon! It has not been invoked in three thousand years!"

"Yet it is our law," said Denethor, "the law of Gondor and Minas Tirith." He turned to the captain of the Guards, who had become wan and pale. "Bring what you found."

Two Guards entered the Tower Hall, and between them they carried a heavy trunk, banded with iron.

Faramir remembered it standing at the foot of her bed, walking by it with her hand in his.

"Here is irrefutable proof," said the Steward. "As the captain and his men will attest, these things were found in her own rooms, under lock and key."

The lock had already been broken, and they opened the trunk without waiting. When the captain began to lift out the things that came to his hand, a breath of consternation filled the room.

The bow was larger than any Faramir had ever seen before, and made of a wood he did not know. It was unstrung, curved delicately against the cloth it had been wrapped in, and lovelier in its shape and line than any Gondorian bow. The string had been wrapped separately and stored with it, and shone as if with a light.

A dagger, more a long knife, came next, and this was recognized by all but the most unworldly as Elven work. Gasps of wonder came from even the oldest lords, and when the captain held up the blade, it glimmered with white fire in the candlelight.

There was another sword, the straight, simple blade of the Rohirrim. It had been pommeled with a brass knob exquisitely shaped like two horses' heads pointing down, and when unsheathed, proved by its edge and metal that it was indeed a lordly weapon.

There was more, pieces of armor and a shield, a spearhead like those the Rohirrim used on horseback, and a shirt of mail that shimmered and weighed nothing, and a man brought in a bundle of swords that had been found in the forge, but Faramir saw them not. He was looking at her, and Buffy was looking at him.

He could not think. He could not speak. He knew a fear that he had not known he could feel, a fear that gripped and tore at him in its desperate flailing.

Everything his father had said was true. There was no escaping it. And the law, too, was what had been cited, though hardly enforced for thousands of years, disused since an age past. The Kings of Gondor had been mostly just, and more than mostly merciful, but many of the laws of Numenor had been unaltered or not repealed through sheer traditionalism. This was one of them; unused and discarded throughout the years, but still valid.

It had occurred to him to ask for mercy by reason of her being a foreigner, and ignorant of Gondorian ways, but then a new terror had gripped him. She was not Rohirrim, not Gondorian, nor of any of the known lands of Men, and he knew she would not be able to prove to anyone's satisfaction where she came from, if she were even willing to speak. Then it would be nothing at all for someone to suggest that she came from the East, since nothing came from the West, and the only people in the East were the peoples of the Enemy.

And he knew that nothing would save her if she were called a spy.

She looked at him, as he thought this, and he met her eyes and saw something in them he had never seen before.

She was frightened.

She hid it well—no one but he would be able to see it. To anyone else, she was free of fear, but he read it in her eyes, her mouth, the way she stood, as plainly as the letters in a book. She was frightened, and did not know what to do.

She would not speak. He had to believe it, tried to tell her with his eyes how important it was that she not speak. For if they heard her talk, they would find out, and then the Steward would not be denied.

How had his father known all these things about her? How had he had time to discover it all? How long had he been watching?

Who had finally betrayed them?

"You see before you the proof of which I spoke," the Steward said. "Can any deny that she is guilty? Can any deny that she must be punished, in accordance to our laws?"

No one spoke. Faramir could see that the gathered lords could barely stand to be there, much less to have any hand in such doings.

Yet the law was the law, and none could gainsay the Steward.

"Father," he heard himself say. "Let me speak."

Denethor turned to him, but Faramir did not wait. He was standing between Buffy and his father before anyone could speak out.

"Father," he said, "I have disappointed you. I have disappointed you many times, all my life. You wanted a man like Boromir for your son, and got him, and, holding me against him, always found me lacking, for who could do anything but fail when compared to my brother? You are right. I have wounded you and shamed you, and now I have been a fool."

The assembled lords looked away, even the Guards of the Citadel seeming to flinch and slide their eyes elsewhere. His father stared at him, eyes wide and dumbfounded, momentarily silenced.

"If I have been a disgrace to you, punish me," said Faramir. "If I am lacking as your son, then harrow me! She has done nothing! If you would flay anyone's back, flay mine, for it was I who sought her out, I who carried on in secrecy instead of coming first to you, I who brought her here to face your wrath. These crimes you charge her with are nothing! Father, for pity's sake, she is only a girl!"

"Mercy, my lord," someone called. "Have mercy!"

"Mercy," someone else cried. "She is only a child!"

The lords cried out all together, and then all in the Tower Hall were clamoring for mercy, even the captain of the Guards. The noise grew in measure until the Tower shook with it, and Faramir began to hope.

The Steward watched him, and seemed to be thinking. Then he made a peculiar look, and it was such a look that the outcry died at once.

"My son," he said, "I, too, will petition for mercy, if she will but speak."

Faramir began to open his mouth, but the Steward silenced him with a hand.

"She must speak," said his father, "and plead guilt to all these crimes with which she has been charged. She must allow those weapons she possesses to be confiscated, and give up her smithing. She must keep no more servants, and live as fits her lot. And..."

Denethor looked at Buffy, where she stood behind Faramir, coming barely up to his shoulder.

"She must release you from your oath," he said, "and put aside from you all obligations of marriage. She must repudiate you, and renounce any claim upon you."

Faramir could not breathe.

He stood, numbed, while his father looked at him and a deathly hush fell over the hall. He felt that his mouth had gone dry, and that he could not feel his arms or legs.

He felt his father's loathing of him like a knife cutting into his flesh.

He turned, slowly and falteringly, to look at her.

She was watching him.

He breathed. He bit his tongue until there was blood in his mouth and swallowed it.

"You must," he said, and his voice had broken into jagged pieces.

She stood, doing nothing, saying nothing, only looking at him. Her eyes were greener than the spring in Ithilien.

"Well?" asked Denethor, and his voice pierced the silence like a spear.

"No," said Buffy, and that word, the one word, was perfect.

Someone cried out. An older man, the lord who had answered the Steward with the punishments, covered his face. In the back of the Hall, Mablung put his hand over his eyes.

Faramir fell to his knees. He had not wept a single time in his life since the death of his mother, and now he could not see for his tears.

"So be it," said his father's voice, unmoved. "My son, as your father who loves you, I would spare you what happens now. You think you are in love, and are not in a condition to see reason. I excuse you from witnessing her punishment."

"Father," said Faramir, and got to his feet. "Father, I beg you—let me take the lash—"

"No," said Denethor.

"Then me," someone cried, and it was Hirluin who came forward. "I will take the scourge for her!"

"I," someone shouted, and it was Mablung. "I will take her place—"

"I, Steward," and Lord Forlong of Lossarnach had pushed his way through. "I will bare my back for hers, if you won't give up this wrongdoing!"

_"Silence!"_ cried the Steward, and they grudgingly obeyed. He looked, enraged, from one face to the other. "Let the harlot take her own punishment! Captain! Take Lord Faramir and put him in a cell! Let him find his sense there, if he will not have it from his father!"

The captain came and took his arm.

"Bare her back," said Denethor. "And bring the coals and iron."

Faramir thrust back the captain, hurled himself at the Guard who had seized Buffy's arm. Three men restrained him, and dragged him back despite his desperate struggling. He did not cry out, he did not shout, he only clenched his teeth and looked at her as long as he could while they grappled with him, looked at her as she looked at him, forced toward the door of the Tower Hall all the while, and he heard nothing and felt nothing and saw nothing but her standing there, her eyes on his, while a Guard of the Citadel took the cloak from her shoulders and a trembling servant brought her own Elven dagger with which to cut through her clothes, and then the captain of the Guards had grasped his shirt and pulled him through the door.


	26. Chapter 26

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The room they took him to was not a cell, but a chamber higher in the Tower. Three men dragged him in, the captain holding open the door, and were forced to push him, almost off his feet, in order to retreat and get out the door before he could turn and come at them again.

The captain's face worked as he tried to quell his own feelings. "My lord," he said, and his voice was hoarse with effort. "My lord, forgive us."

Faramir said nothing. He rushed for the door, almost getting his hand broken as the captain staggered back and pulled it closed with a slam. Faramir seized the handle and heaved, nearly dislocating his shoulder and causing the men holding it to curse as he managed to get it open a few inches before they hauled it back. He heard the rasp of leather against metal, the scratch of wood, and knew that someone had slid a blade through the handle on the other side.

Despair made his throat close up and his breathing grate. He tried to quiet himself, tried to listen for how many men were standing outside his door, but all he could think of was the point of the elven knife set at the back of her neck before cutting down through her tunic and surcoat and all he could hear was his father's voice as he said, _"Bare her back."_

Faramir cried out, and pulled at the door with all his desperate strength. He heard a sharp, metallic noise as the blade snapped, and then he was through the door and the men shouted as they came at him.

When they had got him back in, the three Guards bruised and bleeding and still loath to lay hands on him, the captain said to him, "My lord, I beg you, this does not help her!"

The captain held in his hand the sword they had taken from him, unsheathed. It glimmered in the dimness, the two trees silver-wrought in the blade, and when they shut the door again, he heard the scrape as the captain passed it through the handle.

Faramir cried out again, incoherent, and collapsed on his knees. He struck at the floor so that his hand burst into agony, and then he slumped back against the wall and stared unseeing at the door.

The room was very small. It was disused and dust-covered, and the air was stale. There was a window above his head, but it was small and glassed, nothing a grown man could climb through. There were no candles. The room was dark, the only light the line of pale luminance beneath the closed door.

He thought of Buffy, her face as the whip struck.

He had brought this on her. He had caused this misery, had behaved irresponsibly and without thinking, and now she was punished for it, for his father's hatred of him. He had not been able to stop it, had not seen it coming, had done nothing to prevent it. Now she bled and suffered.

He remembered her face as she told them _"No."_

All she had had to do was give him up. If she had disavowed him, if she had unspoken her oath and made nothing their plight, she would have spared herself. His father would have had his way and she would have been let go, could have left Minas Tirith and put him out of her mind. That was what he himself had wanted her to do.

_No._

She had not forsaken him. Not even to save herself.

He tried to think. He had to go back, had to stop what was happening. He could not get through the window. He could perhaps break down the door—he thought of the sword, her sword, barring the way—and then? There would be the captain and at least his three Guards, four jailers to overcome and maybe others. Faramir knew he would not be able to do so without killing them.

And then? If he were, by some chance, to get all the way back down to the Tower Hall, then what? There would be all the assembled lords and the Steward himself, and the rest of the Guards of the Citadel. He was the Steward's son, but the Steward was the Steward and his command was law. They would not hesitate to cut him down, especially when he was seen to be a traitor and a murderer. Would Mablung face him, blade in hand? He would. Though they were friends, though they had stood beside each other in war and in battle, he would.

There was nothing he could do.

He remembered her the way he had seen her, only an hour or so ago. He remembered her laughing, her smile, touching his hand and sitting by him so that their arms and hips touched. He remembered her tears, her trembling as he took her in his arms and held her close. It was as if she were there now, as if he could see her eyes, feel her skin, taste her mouth as he kissed her, smell the scent of her hair. He could hear her say, low and serious, as if his name were an oath, _"Faramir."_

Did they scourge her now? Did she writhe beneath the lash as her back became torn and bloody from each stroke? Were they putting the iron into the coals, heating it red while they waited to put it to her cheek?

Did they watch? Did no one say anything? Could any lord of Minas Tirith, any man anywhere, bear such shame, though it be a lawful command?

Did she scream?

Faramir did not know if time passed. He could have looked out the window, but there were no stars or moon to tell time. There was no noise from the hall beyond the door, and each moment was more unbearable than the last. His head hung from his shoulders, his back was to the wall, and he sat so for minutes or hours, he could not say.

A failure. All his life, he had disappointed his father, had failed to win his affection, had never been able to come out of Boromir's shadow. And now his failures racked the woman he loved.

She was so small. He thought of the whip on her skin and grew light-headed and felt as if he would retch.

Would she die under the lash?

He felt madness stir in his heart, the madness of one who had lost all to grief. If she died...

If she died...

When he heard the noise of the sword being pulled from the handle of the door, he looked up. When the door opened, the light was low enough that he was not blinded, and he saw the tall shape of a big man step into the room.

"Faramir?" said Boromir's voice, and he saw that it was his brother, dressed as he had last been but for wearing no cloak, and his face, though tired, was perplexed. "Faramir, what has happened?"

He wasted no time but stood, hobbling when his leg was numb with cold. His fingers found Boromir's surcoat, grasped handfuls of the cloth, and he clung to his brother as to life.

"They've taken her," he said, and his voice was a guttural gasp. "They've taken her, Boromir, they're taking the lash to her—"

"What?" said Boromir. "Who, what—what do you mean, the lash—"

_"Buffy," _he cried, and he saw his brother's face still. "Father has had her taken to the Hall, he has had her arrested—he has said that she broke the law, he has commanded that she be punished by whip and brand, brother—_she is being scourged even now—_"

Boromir thrust him back, turned, and tore out of the room.

Faramir listened to the fading drum of his brother's footsteps as he took the hall at a dead run, and felt a double-edged blade in his heart.

"My lord," said the captain where he stood. He, and all three of the battered Guards who stood behind him, looked as if they struggled with emotion. "My lord, please go back into the room."

Faramir did not look at them or answer. He only turned and went back to the wall, the door closing behind him and the blade replaced.

Boromir would stop this. He would go to her, stop them from hurting her. Boromir would save Buffy. She would be spared. Boromir, his brother, would be her shield.

Boromir.

He sat down again, with his legs bent in front of him so that his elbows rested on his knees, and he waited.

He did not notice the cold anymore, nor time. He was thinking of nothing at all, only sitting by himself in the dark and staring at the door. He did not know if anyone passed his door or if the Guards spoke to each other or if it rained again outside. He kept his position, his head up and eyes forward, and he only moved, perhaps an hour or three later, to pull the tree on its chain from beneath his shirt and grip it so tightly that an edge pierced his palm and there was a sharper pain over the dull throb of the earlier nail-marks.

He was seeing again the look on his brother's face, the look he had seen earlier that night, when he had taken Boromir to see the girl he loved.

Boromir had not known. To not know, when all the other lords to be found in the Citadel that night knew, could only mean that their father had purposely kept Boromir from the Tower Hall. He had tried to keep the doings of that night from his firstborn son.

What did that mean?

An age seemed to pass while he sat there, cold and numb and thinking of his father and brother.

Dulled, Faramir came slowly out of his torpor when he again heard the blade removed from the door. The room was lighter, and he saw through the window that dawn approached. When the door opened and Boromir came in, his tread slow and weary, Faramir did not stand.

Boromir stopped, looking at his brother from the doorway. Then, stiffly, he came and sat beside him, putting his back and head against the wall, his left leg stretched out before him, the right brought up as a rest for his knee. A sigh filled the room.

They sat, silent, as the room whitened and the gray of dawn lit the stone. At the door, a hand reached out and pushed, leaving it only slightly ajar, to give the brothers privacy.

"What has happened?" asked Faramir, and his voice was thick and broken.

"She is gone," said Boromir, and then, "I sent her away."

Faramir thought on this. "Father?"

"I did it without his knowing." At Faramir's expression, Boromir laughed without smiling. "I know. I may be joining you here before the day is out, little brother."

They did not speak for a while, and the call of the changing of the guard drifted on the air and even through the window shining with morning light. The Guards at the door spoke to each other in a quiet murmur, yet another small courtesy.

"I did not do this, Faramir." Boromir's whisper was low and heartsick. "I swear I did not. I went to my own chambers, would be there still if your Madril had not come to find me." A murderous anger came into his voice and made it dreadful to hear. "I _will_ find the man who did this," he spat, "and cut out his tongue."

Then he hung back, and Faramir closed his eyes.

"I did not reach her in time," said Boromir finally. "They lashed her. I stopped them scorching her, but...but..."

He made a noise in the back of his throat, and Faramir looked over to see his brother with his face in his hand. He said nothing, watching while Boromir regained his control.

"She never made a sound," said Boromir roughly. "Never! Though they lashed her bloody, she never screamed or whimpered or even spoke. Her face...has anyone ever seen such a face! Not a cry, not a tear, while they stripped the flesh off her back..."

Faramir turned away, his hands throbbing.

Boromir's voice shook. "They brought out a boy. Did you know she had kept servants? He said he was her apprentice, that she was his lady. Poor boy, he could not have known...well. They brought him and they sentenced him to a lesser whipping, and when they went to strike him...by all that is good, Faramir, that girl! Buffy. She—she did not hesitate, you understand, when she—she went to him and threw herself over him, over his back, and offered hers up to be beaten in his stead, though—though it had already been torn open—"

Faramir cried out, and the sound of it seemed to silence everyone who could hear it. The Guard stopped talking, then resumed, louder and more forced. He heard Boromir moving against the stone, but he had turned his face to the wall.

"They put her in a cell," said Boromir, and now his voice was detached and casual, the same voice with which he spoke of battle plans. "I would never have gotten her out, if...if there were not certain persons, there, who had not taken your side in this. They turned their backs as I took her from her cell and brought her out. The gate, however, it was so heavily guarded, I thought we were lost! But—one man, I think you know him, you are familiar with him—he came and begged them as his comrades, and they let me pass."

Faramir had recovered himself, and now straightened against the wall, his jaw aching where he had clenched it. Boromir was still not looking at him; his hands were fists.

"I found him," said Boromir, as if he were distracted. "I remembered what you said, and I found him—Theodred, I mean."

When Faramir did not answer, Boromir continued.

"The Rohirrim stayed near the walls, you see, in the guesthouses on Lampwrights' Street. The—the man who helped me get her out told me this. I got Theodred up out of his bed, I begged him. I got her onto a horse and then I sent her with him out of the city. They are halfway to Rohan by now."

Then he fell silent, as if he could not think of anything else to say or how to say it. They sat, not looking at each other, and Faramir put his face in his hands. The Guards' voices were a low murmur of false cheer.

"She is safe, little brother," said Boromir quietly. "Theodred...Theodred will protect her."

Faramir said nothing. He thought of her riding from the city, her back lacerated and bloody, Theodred's eyes on her, the horse bearing her farther and farther away, and he felt strangely as if this was what it was like to lose her forever, and despair made his heart into a stone.

There was a tentative touch at his neck—Boromir. He felt his brother's large, hilt-callused hand hang above his hair, and then, with great and unpracticed tenderness, Boromir put his hand on Faramir's head and held it there.

"It will be all right, Fara," said Boromir, and the agony Faramir heard in his brother's voice seemed to mirror what he felt in himself. "It will be all right."

They stayed there, not looking at each other, Boromir's hand on his head, until the light from the window was bright and golden and the captain knocked on the door to tell them the Steward had called for them.


End file.
